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LIFE 



TIMOTHY DEXTERi 

EMBRACING SKETCHES 



ECCENTRIC CHARACTERS 



^ THAT 



COMPOSED HIS ASSOCIATES 



By SAMUEL L. KNAPP. 



" Any thing out of the common course is hartshorn to my spirits. '? 

Burton's Anat. of Mtl. 

"The wart on Cicero's nose, will be remembered as long as his 
eloquence." 



BOSTON: 
PUBLISHED BY G. N. THOMSON, 

■32 Washington Straet. 

"1838 
• j 






%^^^-^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838, 

By G. N. THOMSON, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 



Stereotyped by T. Moore, 201 Washington Sureei. 



PREFACE 



In looking over some old papers a short time 
since, I came across several memoranda I had 
made many years ago, on the eccentric person, 
commonly called Lord Dexter. The man and 
most that related to him had passed from my mind 
as one of those dreams in the course of our lives, 
that make a strong impression for a time, and 
then sink from the memory, perhaps never to re- 
turn. The perusal of these old notes awakened 
recollections of by-gone times so distinctly, and 
brought with them so many sunny images, that I 

felt, at once, determined to give the picture a more 
1# 



Yi, PREFACE. 

permanent canvass than these Sibylline leaves 
that I had dragged up from the cells of tlje cav- 
ern. All the dramatis personae of the piece were 
well known to me and were subjects of my par- 
ticular study ; and I think that these persons will, 
at once, be recognized by many in the neighbor- 
hood in which they lived, as drawn fully from 
life, and no trait of their characters or acts as set 
down in malice. 

The poet I have described, is remembered by 
thousands who retain a recollection of his air, and 
manner, as well as the tones of his stentorian 
voice. The person of the colored woman is yet 
fresh in the recollections of men, women and 
children. The weird sisters in the group are not 
strange personages ; not a few will remember 
them distinctly, for they were of notoriety in their 
day. The astrologer has now been dead more 
than thirty years, and much of the present genera- 
tion have come up since his departure ; but there 
are several now in active life, who knew him well 
and have excellent anecdotes of him still in store. 
It is not many years since I heard several of 
ihem. 

The Dog-town landscape^was once true to na- 
ture and history, but in the march of intellect 



PREFACE. VIL 

therfe may be, for ought I know, a city resplendent 
in architecture and famed for wisdom, on the spot 
once so barren and desolate, that the surveyor's 
chain had hardly crossed it when I saw it. Ima- 
ges of buried poverty and misery, may be called 
up by the historian and the philanthropist "to 
point a moral or adorn a tale." One reason, per- 
haps, for thinking our fathers were better than we 
are, may be, that we cherish the memory of the 
good only and leave in forgetfulness all that were 
indifferent or bad. 

To judge rightly of the past we should se^ 
every shade and every light of the picture. The 
living panorama that passes before us must be 
scrupulously examined to give us a fair under- 
standing of the matter; and those of memory 
should be as well grouped and arranged, for us to 
draw sound opinions from them. There is a sort 
of evening shadow over the past, which brings on 
a distinctness which cannot be had under more 
vertical rays of the sun. Some may take excep- 
tions to our going too minutely into past events. 
This is not the example which sacred history sets 
us. In that history, virtues and vices, weakness 
and strength are fully exhibited. There is a 
fastidiousness about modern times that often re- 



Vlll. 



PREFACE. 



Strains a free pen ; which may be illustrated by 
an anecdote. A modern Venetian magnate on 
seeing. West's picture of " Christ Rejected," ob- 
served, that he thought it unkind that the inde- 
cision of his ancestor, Pontius Pilot, should so 
often be brought forward at this late day. 




LIFE OF DEXTER 



If " the proper study of mankind is man,'^ 
every form of character should pass under 
our notice. No one can be said to have a 
thorough knowledge of human nature, who 
has only examined a few of the good and 
wise. The naturalist fills his museum with 
every production of nature, and takes as 
much pleasure in studying the " elegantly 
little," as the vast ; and perhaps dwells long- 
er on the structure and plumage of the fairy 
humming bird, than on the enormous wing 
of the albatross. Goldsmith, in his Animated 
Nature^ has taken as much trouble to de- 
scribe the frog and the toad, as he has in 
portraying the horse, the noblest of all the 
quadrupeds on earth. The mighty delinea- 
tor of human nature, of habits and educa- 
tion, Shakspeare, has made greater effort to 



10 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

show off the eccentric and the foolish than 
he has to exhibit the wise, the heroic and 
the good. In portraying such men as Juhus 
Cgcsar, Anthony, Cicero and the more an- 
cient philosophers and warriors, he has taken 
whole pages from Plutarch and other writers, 
but his eccentrics and fools are all his own. 
In this new path he seemed not to borrow any 
thing, and his Touchstones, Dogberrys, Mal- 
volios, are his alone. Did any previous 
dramatist furnish him with models for his 
Masters Shallow, Slender and Silence? ■ No 
one will pretend to point out any such char- 
cters in any work of antiquity, ^sop drew 
some characters that were foolish enough 
but they were nothing to Shakspeare's crea- 
tion; yet the very moment their likenesses 
were seen they were known to be natural. 

The miser, the fop and the downright fool 
are found in many works, but that com- 
mingling of cunning, shrewdness, imbecility, 
roguery and sarcasm, which constitutes some 
minds and makes up an anomaly in the hu- 
man family, has seldom been attempted. 
After Shakspeare, Sir Walter Scott has been 
the most successful in his dramatic characters, 
and it cannot be denied but that his eccen- 
tric beings are the master touches of his 
pencil. AH his singular beings are acting in 
their proper sphere and make up the variety 
which nature intended to exhibit. These 



LIFE OF DEXTER. H 

satirists have dealt in moral and mental 
monsters; such beings as they wished to 
chastise, they called up by the force of the 
imagination, and after lashing them as long 
as they enjoyed the sounds of their own 
whips, held them before the world, and then 
the monsters sunk again to the shades. Not 
so with the creations of Shakspeare and 
Scott; these poets and masters of' every 
spell, have left their offspring to share im- 
mortality with themselves; Touchstone and 
Meg Merrilies will never die while their pro- 
genitors are remembered. 

Tired of dwelling upon "the tall, the 
wise, the reverend head," and of the prow- 
ess of heroes, I was looking over some old 
papers, and among them 1 found a few pages 
of memoranda, made many years ago, u.pon 
the life and character of that eccentric being, 
how remembered by thousands, Timothy 
Dexter. The fame of this singular man 
was not confined to the town, county or 
state in which he lived; but many of the 
anecdotes respecting him have been publish- 
ed in different parts of the world. No doubt 
that a great many stories told of him were 
made up by the ingenious, but still there are 
enough very well authenticated, to make a 
few amusing pages, aiid to throw some light 
on the idiosyncrasies of the human mind. It 
is a well known fact that " strange beings 



12 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

will find strange associates." This was 
fully proved in the life of Dexter. No one 
ever collected about him a more singular 
group than this oddity. His tricks were 
fantastic^ but never malignant^ when free 
from the insanity of inebriation, and the 
reader, I think, when he has followed him 
through a part of his eccentricities and follies 
will feel more pity than hatred for the man, 
whose only crime was in his possessing For- 
tunatus' cap, to catch a shower of gold for 
which others had to labor hard to obtain in 
scanty drops. 

Timothy Dexter was born in Maiden, 
near Boston, in the year 1743* He was bred 
to the leather dressing, then, and since, a lu- 
crative profession. The business for the 
commonwealth of Massachusetts, was near- 
ly all concentrated in the town of Charles- 
town. Sheep-skins, goat and deer-skins, 
were dressed so elastic and soft as to make 
a delicate wear. About the time of Dexter's 
apprenticeship the secret of dressing skins 
after the fashion of leather brought from the 
Levant, called morrocco leather, became 
known to some of the craft in Charlestown, 
and for years they had the monopoly of the 
business. A great demand for the article 
for ladies' shoes gave the initiated constant 
employment. On arriving at the age of 
twenty-one, Dexter commenced business for 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 13 

himself, and by industry, frugality ana per- 
severance, soon became thrifty and above 
board; and although Charlestown was 
laid in ashes at the commencement of the 
revolutionary struggle, he pursued in the 
neighborhood his calling to a profitable 
account, and in a few years after the peace, 
could command several thousands of dollars 
in specie. He had married a widow whose 
former husband had been in the occupation 
and had left his family in good circumstan- 
ces. She was industrious also, and saving, 
and made no inconsiderable profit on a small 
stock of goods she kept for sale in the huck- 
ster line. Thus they went on, good, quiet, 
tidy, honest folks, blessed with children^ to 
labor for, as well as for themselves. The 
times from the peace of 1783, until after the 
adoption of the federal constitution in 1789, 
were dark and difticult, and many were sadly 
oppressed. The old continental money was 
depreciated to almost nothing, and the secu- 
rities issued by the state of Massachusetts, 
which had for a while kept public confidence 
in that quarter alive, had now sunk to about 
two shillings and sixpence on the pound. 
The patriotic holders were greatly distress- 
ed ; many of them, possessing nothing for 
seven years' services but this trash, were 
forced to part with it for any thing they 
could get. Two benevolent gentlemen in 
2 



X4 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

Boston, John Hancock, governor of the com- 
monwealth at that time, who had formerly 
been president of the continental congress, 
and Thomas Russel, the most eminent mer- 
chant then in America, to keep up the 
public confidence, and to oblige a friend, 
would make purchases of these securities, 
until the amount was considerable. This 
had the desired efiect in some measure, and 
a few other purchasers were found, but hard 
money was so scarce that not much was 
done in this brokerage. Dexter finding his 
great neighbors, Hancock and Russel, doing 
something in stocks, took all his own cash, 
with what his wife had, and in imitation 
purchased likewise. He probably made 
better bargains than the magnates did. He 
bought in smaller quantities, and had better 
opportunities to make his purchases than 
they had. He felt that he could live on his 
industry, and ventured all on the chance of 
these securities ever being paid. When 
Hamilton's funding system went into opera- 
tion, he was at once a wealthy man, and 
leaving his mechanical business, speculated 
pretty largely, in stocks, and to great advan- 
tage, for there were many who then seemed 
to feel and reason as if the government of 
the United States was a house built on sands, 
and the acts of congress but of little more 
permanency than Avriting traced on the same 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 15 

material on the sea-shore, which the first 
storm would efface. 

Dexter soon aspired to join the upper 
classes of society, as many a fortunate block- 
head had done before him ; but he would 
not be hypocritical, and he could not keep 
his mouth shut, and of course made no head- 
way in his attempted progress to join the 
aristocrats of the day. Nothing could be 
done with the upper classes in Boston, and 
he found it more difficult in Salem, which 
led him to turn his attention to Newburyport, 
the third sea-port then in Massachusetts. 
It was a delightful place. 

The town of Newburyport is situated on 
the right bank of the Merrimack. The 
whole territory belonging to the corporation 
is but little more than six hundred acres, 
and nearly one half of this is low pasture 
lands, but the thickly settled part is a lovely 
spot of ground. The southerly line is on an 
elevation about sixty or seventy feet from 
the surface of the river. The main street, 
called High street, running about a mile and 
a quarter from east to west on the town 
boundary, extends either way much further, 
making a delightful riding course of more 
than three miles in" distance. The streets 
running at right angles with High street to 
the water are intersected by others, throwing 
a great portion of the whole site into squares 



16 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

convenient for building lots. The soil is 
light, gravelly and warm, well suited for 
gardens, for which the town is famous. 
Many of the buildings are still of wood: 
forty years ago they were chiefly so. The 
water here is good and the streets are wide 
and kept clean, and every thing about the 
" sweet village," bore marks of industry, 
thrift and comfort. Numerous churches and 
school-houses were placed at convenient dis- 
tances. The shipping was extensive, for 
the size of the place. The town was thrifty 
for many years before the revolution, and 
when the war broke out several merchants 
left Boston to carry on their commerce in 
Newburyport. Their business flourished 
from the peace of 1783, until the embargo of 
1807, when it received a grievous wound, 
but, thank heaven, not a vital stab as many 
thought it would have proved, for it is slowly 
rising from its difficulties. The evils will 
vanish in time, for the people act there upon 
the Grecian maxim that "the gods sell all 
things to industry." The education of this 
people was plain and wholesome. Reading, 
writing and arithmetic were taught to all, 
and their moral precepts were all drawn 
from one book. The bible was read from 
lisping infancy to purblind decrepitude. 
Every one was master of the good old trans- 
lation from the Saxon — and it contains a vo- 



LIF£ OF DEXTEK. IJ 

cabulary sufficiently capacious for all the mo- 
ral and religious relations of life ; the business 
relations find their appropriate language as 
fast as they are required. There never was 
any canaille here : some few there are, as 
everywhere, the unfortunate and poor ; but 
the mass of people were well to do ; intelhgent 
and active, they of course were happy. The 
wealthy and intellectual portion of the com- 
munity formed a circle that had sufficient of 
the comforts and refinements of life to give 
society a charm which is seldom found in 
overgrown cities. The population was not 
so large as to hide any individual, however 
humble. Each stood out as it were from the 
canvass, and could be examined by every 
one who Avished to ob'serve. It will be seen, 
by those who take the trouble to think upon 
the subject, that there are more singular and 
eccentric characters to be found in small 
places than in large; in the latter it is hard 
to attract notice. The diorama is con- 
stantly shifting, and an individual is seen for 
an instant only, and then disappears, perhaps 
forever ; while in the small picture, which 
is not larger than the angle of ordinary vision, 
each image stands for constant examination. 
The landed property in Newburyport was, 
at the time of Dexter's coming there, lower 
than in other sea-ports in the East, in conse- 
quence of the failure of several distinguished 
2^ 



18 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

merchants who had traded too largely on the 
return of peace. Their palaces — for they 
could not, in justice, be called by a lesser 
name — were in the market, and Dexter pur-- 
chased two of them. One of them he occu- 
pied for a short time, and on the revival of 
business sold it at a fair profit. The other 
he fitted up for himself in his own style. It 
was a princely chateau, standing on the 
height of land about a quarter of a mile from 
the river, commanding a most beautiful and 
extensive view of the sea, the Isle-of-shoals, 
and the far surrounding country. The 
grounds had been laid out in the most ap- 
proved European manner by the intelligent 
artists from England and France. 

The house was capacious and well finish- 
ed, and the out-houses tasteful and com- 
modious. A lovelier spot or a more airy 
mansion, Lucullus himself could not have 
wished ; and all his ponds would not have 
furnished a greater variety of excellent fish 
than the Newburyport market supplied. 
When Dexter bought this seat every thing 
about it was in fine order ; but it was not to 
the taste of the purchaser. He raised min- 
arets on the roof of his mansion, surmounted 
by gilt balls in profusion ; and the whole 
building was painted as finely as a fiddle. 
One who marked the alteration compared it 
to a person changing the robes of a peer and 



LIFE OF DKXTER. i9 

assuming the motley dress of a harlequin ; 
but this made the bumpkins stare, and gave 
the owner the greatest pleasure. In all the 
agitations of a vitiated taste, Dexter went on 
with his supposed imjjroveinents. In the 
garden, which extended several hundreds of 
feet on the noble high- way, passing in front 
of it, and was filled with fruit and flowers 
of indigenous growth, or those imported 
from Europe, or acclimated from warmer 
regions, the tasteless owner, in his rage for 
notoriety, created rows of columns, fifteen 
feet at least, high, on which to place colossal 
images carved in wood. Directly in front 
of the door of the house, on a Roman arch of 
great beauty and taste, stood general Wash- 
ington in his military garb. On his left 
hand was Jefi'erson ; on his right, Adams, 
uncovered, for he would suffer no one to be 
on the right of Washington with a hat on. 
On the columns in the garden there were 
figures of Indian chiefs, military generals, 
philosophers, politicians and statesmen, now 
and then a goddess of Fame, or Liberty, 
meretricious enough to be either. If he, in 
the plentitude of his generosity, raised a col- 
umn to a great man to-day, he reserved the 
liberty of changing his name to-morrow ; 
and often the painter's brush made or un- 
made a fierce warrior. General Morgan, 
yesterday, is Bonaparte to-day ; and the 



20 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

great Corsican leader was often as much 
neglected in the garden of the capricious 
Dexter, as he afterwards was at St. Helena. 
But Dexter was more of a gentleman than 
Sir Hudson Lowe, and never passed Bona- 
parte- — even when he was not so great a 
favorite — without touching his hat. 

There were upwards of forty of the figures, 
including four lions, two couchant, and two 
passant. These were well carved, and at- 
tracted more attention from those who had 
any taste than all the exhibition except the 
arch, on which stood the three presidents. 
The lions Avere open mouthed and fierce ^as 
if they had been rampart in Heraldic glory, 
and reminded the gazer of the lion in the 
sounding verses of Sir Richard Blackmore: 

" The lordly lion looked so wondrous grim, 
His very shadow durst not follow him." 

These images were all in good repair 
when Dexter died. The first that time or 
accident threv/ down, was the gigantic Corn- 
planter, the mighty progenitor of a race of 
illustrious sachems. Whether this was om- 
inous of the fate of the red men, or a mere 
accident, no oracle yet has told us ; but when 
the column was prostrate in the dust, the 
Indian was placed as a scare crow to the 
chickens, but they soon became brave under 
the feet of " the fierce barbarian grinning 
o'er his prey." The rest of the columns stood 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 21 

the sunshine and the storms until " the great 
September gale," which happened in 1815, 
when most of them were thrown down in 
that tornado. The three presidents rode out 
the storm. The executor on the estate sold 
the images at auction. The goddess of Fame 
sold for the most money — she brought five 
dollars. The image of the great premier of 
England, William Pitt, whose sagacity and 
firmness guided Britain in safety through 
the most terrific convulsions of nations, when 
the great deep of the political world was 
broken up and a universal dehige threatened 
mankind, was sold for a dollar; and an ec- 
clesiastic who had been named the " Travel- 
ling Preacher" brought only fifty cents. 

Dexter had put himself among the great 
he delighted to honor, and labelled the col- 
umn, " I am the greatest man in the East ;" 
and 1 believe once it was extended to the 
North, West and South, and his fame as a 
philosopher made an addendum. What a sa- 
tire on monumental glory ! On the fallen 
image no bid could be had ; so fares it with 
those who thrust themselves into company 
with whom they had no claim of equality. 

The cost of these columns and images was 
considerable, probably twice as much as 
the whole estate, when Dexter purchased. 
The arch and figures of the presidents were 
expensive, two thousand dollars or more; 



22 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

the lions, without the cohimns on which 
they stood, were carved at two hundred dol- 
lars apiece. The other thirty-six columns 
with their images must have cost two hun- 
dred dollars each — taking in the lettering 
and gilding, the whole could not have fallen 
short of fifteen thousand dollars. 

In the group on the arch, Mr. Jefferson 
holds in his hand a scroll partly unrolled, 
intended to compliment him as the author 
of the Declaration of Independence. The 
sculptor had not imagined it so obscure as 
to require an inscription, but lord Dexter 
thought that he would make the painter 
finish what the sculptor, in his opinion, 
neglected. His favorite painter, a .very 
clever artist, Mr. Babson, was employed. 
He commenced his labor by taking the pre- 
caution to tie a rope around his body to pre- 
vent accidents on the scanty staging, and 
rnade it fast to some part of the arch. He 
measured out his letters, "The Declaration 
of Independence," and while pencilling it. 
Dexter, from the ground, could not distinctly 
see the letters, but as soon as the painter had 
reached Dec, Dexter called out to him, "That 
is not the way to spell Constitution." " You 
want," returned the painter •' the Declaration 
of Independence." " I want the Constitu- 
tion, and the Constitution I will have." 

The Constitution had then just been adopt- 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 23 

ed, and by the adoption Dexter' s fortune 
was made, and that was uppermost in his 
mind at all times, and the Declaration of 
Independence was a matter too deep in the 
recesses of ancient history for his lordship's 
memory ; still, with the pertinacity of an 
honest mind, Mr. Babson would not erase 
his letters, for he knew what the artist in- 
tended. Dexter raved : the painter remon- 
strated most distinctly, when Dexter went 
into the house, brought out a large pistol and 
discharged it at his inan of letters before the 
latter had a chance of escape. The ball en- 
tered the house, and the marks of its passage 
were long afterwards seen there. The en- 
raged lord was no shot, and was fortunate 
in hitting the side of a house instead of the 
object of his wrath. The letters remain to 
tliis day, " The Constitution.^^ 

Society is always in danger when the 
sword and purse are united, as they were in 
this instance ; — in fact, their union has al- 
ways been attended with fearful consequen- 
ces. Their connection has never been legiti- 
mate. The Uberties of Rome were lost 
when the Pretorian band had possession of 
the military chest. The mind that has two 
such powers to wield, sinks under its exer- 
tions, for it is constantly in a state of intoxi- 
cation ; the rule extends from the household 
officers to those of an empire. 



24 LIFE OE DEXTER. 

Dexter imported elegant articles from 
France to furnish his house, and it must be 
confessed that his agents were men of taste ; 
for some portions of it were splendid and 
classical. It was soon after the era of phren- 
sy, in France, when David's pencil drew 
models for the upholsterer, and the sans cu- 
lotte and the assassin changed their savage- 
ism to taste, intending to enjoy this world, as 
they believed in no other. This elegant and 
tasteful furniture v/as soon spoiled by abuse. 
He and his son, with such companions as 
they could find, kept up their revels in the 
best apartments of the house. His wife was 
seldom at home, for she could not live in 
his house with any comfort. This mansion, 
once the abode of a wise and elegant man, 
with a well-regulated family, now became a 
pest-house and not unfrequently a bagnio. 
Of course, the splendid French colors became 
tawdry-yellow or dirty-red. Curtains and 
counterpanes which had once belonged to 
the queen of France, which, at all events^ 
were elegant, were covered with unseemly 
stain, offensive to sight and to smell. 

He had seen at the houses of Hancock 
and Russel, cases of well bound books, and 
he was seized with a desire to emulate them 
in the possession of a library. He bought 
the best bound books he could find, and in 
that manner secured some valuable works: 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 25 

but he was often deceived, as such binding 
as he liked was put on worthless books and 
exposed to his sight as by accident. He had 
splendid editions of Bornel Thornton's 
Works, the Bon Ton Magazine and all such 
ridiculous trash ; but he never read in them 
ten minutes at a time. These books were 
scattered through every apartment in his 
house, while the book case was half empty, 
and its doors on the swing. The leaves in 
his books were turned down at places at- 
tractive to the reader. The libidinous prints 
were often much worn, and many books 
were entirely despoiled of their cuts by the 
people who visited him. The library, when 
sold, amounted to a trifle only, as most of 
those of a fair character were torn and de- 
faced. 

He was told of the great passion some of 
the noble lords in England had for paintings, 
who had expended large fortunes in collecting 
galleries for the gratification of their taste in 
this way, and he gave himself no rest until 
he had commenced a gallery. He employed 
a young gentleman of taste, who was about 
to visit Holland and other parts of Europe, 
to act as a picture fancier for him, and it 
must be confe'ssed that he had made some good 
purchases, but on his return. Dexter selected 
all the daubs and declined taking the others. 
The collector was at first indignant and mor- 
3 



26 LIFE OF DEXTEK. 

tified, but some one suggested to him to mark 
those ordinary paintings with some great 
master name, and all would be right. This 
he did in self-defence, and a Correggio, a 
Guido, a Raffaelle, or a Titian were hung 
upon the walls before the paint was dry that 
marked their names. If he was cheated, he 
was not the only dupe in picture baying, for 
many who have started into sudden wealth, 
and who supposed that the acquisition of 
dollars superinduced a refinement of taste, 
have been most laughably imposed upon, 
and often while pointing out the beauties of 
the picture to their guests, by rote, as the 
salesman dealt them out at his rooms, or the 
auctioneer when his eloquence was enforced 
by his hammer, are unconscious of the 
sneer that plays about the lips of the listen- 
ing connoisseur who is waiting for his dm- 
ner. In Dexter' s palmy state there were but 
few good pictures in the country, and the 
most wealthy and ancient families contented 
themselves with a portrait from Smybert or 
Copley, of some ancestor, and the rest of the 
ornaments were some French engravings of 
Joseph, sold by his bretliren, or Jonah thrown 
into the sea, or of the bears sent to devour the 
wicked children ; but the most venerated 
painting of the household was generally the 
Family Coat of Arms, the production of 
some wonderful sign-painter who had suffi- 



LIFE OF CEXTEFv. 27 

cient enterprise to own Guillim's Book of He- 
raldy, from which he copied the arms of such 
famiUes as he found there, and who tran- 
scribed on the back of the picture, the de- 
scription of the bearings and crests in lan- 
guage equally unintelligible to Umiier and 
possessor. 

At one time Dexter's passion was for horses, 
and with the assistance of his coachman he 
was frequently successful in obtaining a fine 
span for his carriage; but although he kept 
a beautiful saddle horse, he seldom ventur- 
ed to appear on horseback. He conceived 
a desire for the exhibition of cream -colored 
horses, and after a long time bought a pair 
of very good ones, and for a while he lieard 
the boys cry out, '' Huzza for Dexter's 
horses !'" but their admiration died away, 
and his love for cream-colored horses died 
with it. Unstable as the wind, he sold them 
for no other fault than that they would not 
change color as his fancy changed. 

His coach was elegant, fend well, as it 
came from the maker's hands, but he must 
make it gaudy and finical. He had his 
coat of arms painted on it, with the Baronial 
supporters, which he stole from the Peer- 
age according to the dictates of his taste, 
being beyond the power of the Herald office 
and all its kings at arms. 

He found it difficult to fill up the measure 



28 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 



of his time, as he had led an industrious 
Hfe. And finding merchants then the lead- 
ing men, and thinking that they were soon to 
be the nobility of the country as they had 
been the nobility of Venice, as some of those 
around him intimated, he engaged most zeal- 
ously in commerce. At that period it was 
almost impossible to make a bad voyage, 
go any where, in any part of the habitable 
globe. His traffic was principally to the 
West Indies and to Europe, but he sent ad- 
ventures to the East Indies, which were gen- 
erally very profitable. While engaged in 
commerce, Dexter' s son, Samuel Lord Dex- 
ter, as he was called, arrived to that age 
when young men think themselves capable 
of doing the business of factor abroad, then 
seldom trusted to the master of a vessel. The 
son importuned the father for this employ- 
ment and prevailed upon him to send him in 
that capacity to Europe ; the result was that 
he squandered the full amount of the cargo 
at the gambling table, where he was a mere 
gull. The old man had some misgiving 
when he sent his hopeful heir on such an 
errand, and was not so much disappointed 
as might have been supposed at such an is- 
sue. The boy was naturally imbecile, but 
his course of education made him a tool for 
every sharper. Intoxicated with the fame 
of his father's wealth, he thought that it 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 29 

would supply the place of every thing; of 
course he was idle at all times, and profli- 
gate when he could be. He grew in size 
more rapidly than most boys, but his mind 
was stored with nothing useful or ornamen- 
tal. He was capricious in his appetite, petu- 
lant in his temper, and cowardly in the ex- 
treme, and, in fact, rotten to the core. He 
had but one redeeming virtue among boys, 
and it was that of profusion. He bribed 
them with cakes, fruit and confectionary, to 
assist him in getting his lessons and to screen 
him from insults. His father's ideas of gen- 
tility, consisted in the expenditures of his 
son, and as he was the most lavish of a*ll 
the boys, of course he was the most elevat- 
ed of the gentry. His education was costly, 
and his father thought it good. The only 
ingenuity and talent he ever exhibited was 
in inventing lies to screen himself from pun- 
ishment. The boys despised, and the mas- 
ter pitied his imbecility. School became 
irksome to him, as smaller boys went before 
him, and larger ones neglected him. On 
returning home and mingling with the young 
merchants he conceived the desire of being 
supercargo, and it eventuated as we have 
stated. 

When he returned from his European 
voyage he hved in perpetual quarrels with 
his father, and plunged into every species 
3* 



30 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

of dissipation ; a more useless or profligate 
young man could not be found. He was a 
goose from whom every knave plucked a 
feather, to whom every Cyprian had a chain 
to hold him as a cub. If he had been for- 
tunate enough to have had a sober and dis- 
creet father, who would have insisted on a 
proper education, feeble as he was, some- 
thing might have been made of him. It was 
a difficult time to educate a boy who had 
any expectations of fortune from his parents, 
for there were then many wretched exam- 
ples of profligacy among the sons of the rich 
men of that time. It would be painful to 
call up names, but most of those who have 
reached middle age can call to mind many 
fine fellows, who, from mistaken impressions 
of life, have gone down to the grave "un- 
wept, unhonored, and unsung.'' The E.'s, the 
K's, the T's, and the S's, &c. &c., read no- 
thing but anecdotes of Charles Fox's dissipa- 
tion, or of Richard Brinsly Sheridan's wit and 
profligacy. In the sport of buckism they 
ate hundred dollar bills on a slice of bread 
and butter, and skipped dollars on the sur- 
face of a pond, all to show their nobility. 
Many of their fathers, honest men, whose 
great merit was success, looked forward to 
the time when orders of nobility would be 
created in this country, and if they were 
not elevated to the peerage themselves, they 



LIFE OF DEXTER. ^ 

imagined that their high-bred sons would 
stand a good chance for the advancement. 
They did not see that the polarity of the 
government and people was inclining to de- 
mocracy; but, fortunate or not, all those 
aristocratical feelings were swept away by 
the tide that was then beginning to agitate 
the public mind. The past seems a dream 
to those who lived in it, and almost a legend 
to those who only take it from history ; from 
history did I say? history was afraid to 
record a tythe of the truth of the times. 
The wisest knew nothing of the elastic pow- 
er of public opinion. Young Dexter, like 
many of his contemporaries, the sons of rich 
men died, without doing the slightest good 
in society and without any particle of regret 
from any one. No drunken companion who 
had partaken of his wine even said "he 
was a clever fellow ; it is a pity he went off 
so soon." 

We may as well speak of the daughter of 
Timothy Dexter now as at any other time. 
She bloomed for a while, a giggling belle of 
more than ordinary personal beauty; but 
her education was superficial as her brother's. 
The fame of her father's wealth brought 
about her a host of swindling, simpering gal- 
lants ; but most of them retired after a visit 
or two, finding it impossible, with all their 
love of money, to bring their minds to 



32 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

make serious proposals to one so entirely 
unfitted for society. At length, a grave, 
philosophical scholar, who had travelled in 
Europe and the East, made his bow to her. 
His fame was then at its height. She 
saw his name in the newspapers, as hav- 
ing made a pilgrimage to Mecca, or of doing 
some other wonderful feat in the way of 
travel, and her vanity was raised at his at- 
tentions. He was deeply read in men, and 
soon knew how to manage lord Dexter. 
They were married ; the father did not 
bleed as freely as he expected, and his wife 
did not improve as he thought she would do 
under his instruction. They dragged along 
together, she growing every day more slat- 
ternly and silly and he more morose and inat- 
tentive. They had one child, a daughter. 
The father has been attentive to her morals 
and education, and she makes a respectable, 
excellent woman. Soon after the child was 
born, his wife grew intemperate, was led 
astray, and a divorce followed. She lived 
for many years a sad object of fatuity and 
wretchedness. There are none of the crea- 
tures of God that make so pitiful a spectacle 
as a feeble mind sunk in vice. It has no 
redeeniing flash of thought, no lucid remi- 
niscences, no bitter weepings over the past, 
which show what once existed, and often 
screen a fallen being from deserved neglect 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 33 

and insult. The bloated forms of idiocy, 
and the obstreperous, vacant laugh of in- 
sanity aTe appalling to sensitive minds, and 
a sore lessener to those who indulge in the 
pride of human nature. She was kept out 
of public sight, and supported by the provi- 
dent care of her father ; one good deed 
which should be named in the waste of 
his life, where but few green spots are to be 
found. 

Dexter, by every devise, could only be no- 
torious, but not popular. He soon found 
that people did not always find respectabili- 
ty according to the extent of their taxes, nor 
even in proportion to their profusion. The 
men would not associate with him, the wo- 
men shunned him, and the boys used him at 
times for their mirth. Boys are shrewd 
critics and good judges of men, within which 
lists they would not suffer him to come. In 
any other portion of our country, but such 
a quiet place as Newburyport, he could not 
have existed ; the mob, or the incensed 
citizen, would have driven him out until his 
reason had come to him ; but there they as- 
sumed no Lynch law, having too great a re- 
spect for the ordinances and laws establish- 
ed by their fathers. 

He had nothing to give the people but his 
money, and this they would not except, at 
the price of granting him indulgences to 



34 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

commit crimes, or even peccadilloes or follies, 
biu they were willing to protect him in all 
his rights. He would have done better in 
TiOndon than in the town of Newburyport. 
In a large place, generosity, or the parade of 
it, has ten thousand wings, but domestic 
sins are often hid in the mighty wilderness 
of an overgrown population, while they are 
directly exposed to the sharp-sightedness of 
a village. 

When Dexter first came to Newburyport 
he opened his garden for the inspection of 
the public,, and in the seasons of fruits and 
flowers v/as very liberal to his visiters, par- 
ticularly to those from the country. Gay 
maidens came from his gates laden, with 
flowers or fruits, and seemed happy in their 
visit to the strange man. If their gallants 
thought he was not a Solomon, they found 
him no niggard. This did not last long, for 
he soon considered, and in fact called his 
grounds ^^ a yellow-hird trap f^ for although 
he was an hundred times rebuffed and treat- 
ed with the profoundest contempt, yet he 
still persisted in believing that he was mas- 
ter of all he found there. The story of his 
attempts at improper liberties with his fe- 
male visiters soon became current, and the 
number diminished every day; but those 
who still persisted in coming were of the 
less scrupulous of their sex. His flowers and 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 85 

fruits lost their charms, and ofterx were of- 
fered in vain. If an unsophisticated female 
came from the country, unacquainted with 
his reputation, he gloated over her with the 
most disgusting fondness ; but it was fre- 
quently a long while before the girl under- 
stood the man who offended her by such in- 
civilities. There were instances of his get- 
ting most sadly used up by such guests, 
when they saw the situation they were in. 
On the whole, his trap-cage cost more than 
it came to ; for sometimes a half a dozen 
country damsels made him a visit for a frolic, 
and protected each other. 

When disappointed of 'his prey he would 
rave about house and curse his family for 
ioining in the league against him. How 
wretched is the life of a dotard, in the pur- 
suit of what he calls pleasure. 

A thousand anecdotes have been told of 
Timothy Dexter showing his folly and his 
success, and many of them are unquestiona- 
bly correct. When in the full tide of his 
commercial speculations, he was the same 
imitative creature as in buying his securi- 
ties. Some of the merchant's clerks were 
fond of quizzing him ; at one time they put 
him up to send a large lot of warming-pans 
to the West Indies, as a part of an assorted 
cargo. The captain, a young and ingenious 
man, finding this article in the invoice, set 



36 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

his yaiikee talents to work to find a sale for 
them. He took off the covers and had hand- 
some handles put to them, and called them 
skimmers and the pan part, ladles. He then 
had them introduced into a large sugar-making 
establishment, and they were much approved 
of, as the best machines of their kind ever 
invented. Every sugar-maker was anxious 
to obtain several sets for his establishment, 
and the whole was sold to great advantage. 
At another time a rigger of one of his ves- 
sels called upon him for a large quantity of 
stay stuff, when he rode to Salem and Boston, 
and purchased up all the whale-bone to be 
found, and had it brought to Newbury port, 
and when his workmen laughed at him for 
his stupidity, he said, " Never mind." In a 
short time it was found that he had monopo- 
lized the article and could command his own 
price for it. This put him on a scent by 
which he frequently profited, for he would 
inquire if any article was scarce in the mar- 
ket, and if so, he would buy up all he could 
find, and not unfrequently raised the price 
of it to double or more. He made quite a 
speculation in opium at one time, in this 
way. It often happened that shrewd mer- 
chants were suspicious of selling him an ar- 
ticle, apprehensive that it was almost a sure 
sign that it was going to rise, although they 
could see no reason for it. 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 37 

He purchased a splendid country seat, in 
the town of Chester, in New Hampshire, 
thinking that novelty would please him, and 
that the reputation for wealth would avail 
him more in the country than in the town. 
Here, after ornamenting his house and out- 
houses in the most finical manner, and other- 
wise lavishing large sums of money in mak- 
ing magnificent stables, and monstrous sized 
pigeon-houses, he began to quarrel with the 
inhabitants, wiio cared but little for the 
wealth they could not share ; and they more 
than once put a stop to his impudence with 
a horse-whip/ Hampton Beach, in the 
county of Rockingham and state of New 
Hampshire, is a famous watering place. 
There is a beautiful beach of no inconsid- 
erable extent, from which the eye rests on a 
boundless expanse of the ocean. At morn- 
ing and evening, on fine summer days, are 
to be seen gay groups of men, women and 
children wandering about, picking up shells 
which the winter storms and waves have 
brought to the shore, and to add to the pic- 
turesque beauties of the scene, there is a 
bluff called '' Boar's .Head," against which 
the sea dashes in impotent roar in the storm, 
but at the summer season so gently laves as 
to give it that beauty which borders on sub- 
hmity, but does not reach it. On this beach, 
those who came to take '' a sniff of the 
4 



38 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

briny-j" are free and easy in their intercourse 
with strangers. Here Dexter often resorted 
to catch the notice of some one who had 
not much acquaintance with ''^ the greatest 
man in the East,^^ and ran over his history, 
which he was generally fond of communi- 
cating to any one who was willing to listen 
to him. On such occasions he was silly, but 
still amusing to many. A playful girl 
amused herself with him on one of their ex- 
cursions, until he lost all sense of propriety, 
and rudely assailed her. She outran him, 
and coming up all out of breath to the car- 
riage where her protecter was, she entered 
her complaint to him. He was a gigantic 
youth, who could not brook this treatment of 
his female friend, and yet disdained to use 
his strength in the ordinary way to avenge 
her, seized the old man by the collar, led 
him to the steps of the carriage and seating 
himself on them, took the offender across his 
knee and chastised him with his open hand 
as school-masters used -to do unlucky ur- 
chins who stole apples, or played truant, in 
former days. The blows were so severe as 
to make the blood trickle to the heels of the 
offender. This kept him in good order in 
public places for years. 

Dexter was not only ambitious of being a 
lover of learning, but made a most wonder- 
ful effort to write a book. This extraordi- 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 39 

nary performance was called, a very signifi- 
cant title, " A Pickle for the Knowing 
Ones." It was a galamathies of all the satos, 
shreds, and patches that ever entered the 
head of " a motley fool ^^^ with some items of 
his own history and some allusions to his 
family difficulties. It was so ridiculous that 
there seemed no small degree of ingenuity 
in making it up, and probably he had some 
assistance from the printer, or his devil. He 
spurned all the ordinary laws of orthoe- 
py or punctuation. He spelt from the light 
of nature, and left common sense to make 
out the pointing ; but fearing they should 
forget the stops, he put them all in the last 
page, requesting the reader to place them 
where he pleased. Of this work he publish- 
ed and gave away a large edition, under- 
standing that the noblemen in England did 
not sell their literary works, but sent them 
as presents through the land. The example 
of lord Byron, of later days, could not then 
have been cited, as he had never written or 
published, or sold to them who gave him 
the most for his works like other men. This 
work contained a likeness of this " greatest 
man of the East,'^ admirable for its correct- 
ness, and valuable for the engraving. His 
little dog is placed in the foreground, and 
is as good a likeness as that of his master. 
He was made happy by hearing the compli- 



40 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

merits paid to him for this extraordinary work. 
He was told, and he repeated it, that Shak- 
speare and Mihon were not his equals, and 
his work would be read when they were for- 
gotten ; not thinking it mightjie added, as 
it was in another case, " not until theny 
The book is out of print ; many of these 
volumes are no doubt scattered throughout 
the country, but, by most diligent search, I 
have been unable to procure a copy, although 
in my inquiry I fomid king James' Blast 
blown against Tobacco, and many curious 
old sermons, with long and quaint^ titles. 
What a careless generation ! one would 
almost think that the press had not the pow- 
er to preserve works, of genius, according to 
the boast of the times. There are now in 
existence several volumes of his library, but 
his production has sunk to oblivion. I 
think he has broached the idea of his own 
immortality in the volume, and anticipated 
the wonderings of posterity over his lucu- 
brations. He is not the only author and 
publisher of a book who has made errone- 
ous calculations. " 1 write for perpetuity." 
may have been said in the hearts of thou- 
sands ; but few such presentiments were 
the true promptings of genius. ; 

When the news of the death of Louis 
XVI. arrived in Boston, Dexter was there. 
He hastened to Newburyport, as fast as his 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 41 

horses would carry him ; but said nothing of 
the intelUgence he had received. It was early 
in the evening, when several of the church 
bells of the town began to toll, to the sur- 
prise of the inhabitants. On reaching the 
doors of the churches the people found them 
closed. Dexter had procured the sextons, 
when he found those that could be bribed, 
to commence the passing bell before he 
promulgated the news of the death of the 
amiable monarch. The selectmen soon 
stopped the bells, but Dexter gained his 
point, that of promulgating the mournful 
tidings after his own manner. The boys 
left their play, and gathering in groups, lis- 
tened to the tale of wo. One. however, of 
the Jacobins of that day, a little fellow, said 
he was glad of it; all kings should die, 
said he, that poor people might have their 
money ; he wished the poor would cut off 
the heads of our rich men to-morrov/. 
Another urchin mounted the fence, and from 
a post took the other side. He said king 
Louis XVI. was a good man, and assisted 
the Americans in gaining their indepen- 
dence; and wicked men cut off his head 
before the good men could come to save him ; 
and then related several anecdotes of his 
generosity to the poor. The boys were 
mostly on the side of the latter speaker. 
The first was hustled out of the company ; 
4# 



42 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

and some one of them bearing that it Avas 
Dexter who brought the news, and paid 
sexton Hale and others for tolhng the bell, 
proposed to make Dexter a visit and to 
sympathize with him. The great man, 
at that time, hved in the centre of the 
town, in the first palace that he had pur- 
chased. The proposition was at once ac- 
ceded to, and the crowd moved to State 
street, and paraded before Dexter's door, 
who came out to know their wishes. The 
speaker whose eloquence had been approv- 
ed of by the boys stated to him the object of 
their visit, and thanked him for noticing the 
death of so good a man. Dexter acquitted 
himself remarkably well. He said in reply, 
they were fine boys, and would grow up and 
make great men ; adding, that if the fruits 
or flowers were growing, he would let them 
all come into the garden ; but it was the 
season only for digging. He then proposed, 
that they should come in and have a glass 
of wine ; but the boys said that would be 
making merry, and declined the lionor. As 
they turned to depart they raised the cry, 
" long live Dexter." Never was being more 
happy than Dexter at that moment. The 
boys went home, some were reprimanded 
for the course they took, and others were 
commended for their good feelings. Dexter, 
during the whole French revolution, ex- 
pressed his commiseration for the roN'al 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 43 

family that had escaped the guillotine, and 
said that he would fit up his house for their 
accommodation, if they should escape to 
this country. At one period he bought up 
a large stock of provisions, alleging his be- 
lief that they would come here. They did 
not come ; but provisions rose in price, and 
he made a handsome advance on them. 
This he attributed to Providence, to pay him 
for his good intentions; but most probably 
this was a piece of his sagacity, or of imi- 
tation, as some of his shrewd neighbors had 
accumulated a stock likewise, and saw their 
accoiuit in it as well as himself, without al- 
leging any such reasons for their course of 
business. Such a man's motive, it is fre- 
quently difficult to discover, and perhaps 
would be equally difficult for him to honestly 
avow ; there are but few men who are suffi- 
ciently attentive to their own thoughts to 
be able to analyze every motive to action, 
and among these Dexter was not one. 

Dexter, notwithstanding he believed that 
liis name Avould go down to posterity in 
great honor, and that over his remains there 
would hang a permanent halo of glory, still 
knew that, according to the course of na- 
ture, " this mortal coil must be shuffled 
off," and other worlds must be tried, and 
that sooner than he might expect. With 
this impression, he built himself a tomb, not 



44 LIFE OF DEXTElR. 

a dark and dreary vault, where neither air 
nor sun obtains entrance, except when its 
" ponderous and marble jaws are opened" 
to receive a tenant. Dexter's tomb was the 
basement story of a handsome summer- 
house, erected on a sightly position, sur- 
rounded by " shrub, flower and tree." The 
tomb was well lighted and ventilated — a 
mere pleasant retreat, " after life's fitful fe- 
ver" should be over. In this sleep of death 
he knew not what dreams might come, and 
he said, that " as a candle burning in one's 
room at night kept off bad dreams, why 
♦should not the light of day keep off" ugly 
spectres when we shall sleep the long sleep of 
death? and the music which the living have 
in the summer-house can offend no one." 

Some one had told him, for it was the 
amusement of young and old wags to fill his 
head with singular events, that the great car- 
dinal Wolsey, when he was in power, "sound- 
ing all the depths and shoals of honor," had 
sent to Egypt for a black marble sarcopha- 
gus of great size, in which his body was to 
wait the resurrection of the just. In all 
probability the relator did not tell him that 
thecardinal did notusehis sarcophagus, hav- 
ing died in disgrace ; and certainly no one 
could tell him whose mortal remains should 
rest in it, for lord Nelson, whose corse now oc- 
cupies it, was then living in the full tide of 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 45 

fame, the admiration of Dexter, with the 
rest of the world, for he had placed his effi- 
gy in his galaxy of the worthies who orna- 
mented his grounds. After long meditation, 
he came to the conclusion of preparing his 
own coffin, as he had done his tomb, and 
most certainly reason could find no argu- 
ments against one, more than the other ; nor, 
in fact, against either. His first object was 
to hunt for an extraordinary lot of mahoga- 
ny plank ; and, by picking a board here and 
another there, he succeeded in procuring them 
full of knots, curls and veins of rich hues. 
The next step was to employ a cabinet mak- 
er to construct the coffin. A house joiner^ 
whose works were mostly pine, would not, 
in his mind, be sufficiently skilled to make 
such a doomsday article. A workman was 
at length found, of reputation enough to be 
employed. It was an excellent piece of 
work, well jointed and fastened, superbly 
lined and pillowed, and in which a living 
head might have rested comfortably. Four 
massy silver handles were attached to the 
sides, in order that it might be moved about 
without the awkwardness generally atten- 
dant on handling a coffin with a corse in it, 
particularly a heavy one. He surveyed the 
article with delight, and having the top un- 
screwed, tried this future repository of 
his ashes, and found that there was room 



46 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

enough for him to lie well. He then placed 
it in a room convenient for exhibition. He 
took no small pleasure in showing it to his 
visiters, who generally expressed a wish to 
see it. At other times it was locked up with 
caution, for fear it might be injured, by ac- 
cident or design ; for ho. knew enough of hu- 
man nature to believe, that envy and malice 
often struck their daggers into the coffin of 
those Avhose presence when living they fled 
from. With the key which fast bound his 
treasure in his pocket, he went to prepare 
the place in which he was to rest, by some 
new change of earth, wall or upper build- 
ing, according to his caprice, and to hasten 
the time of his coming to it by copious 
draughts of alcohol — the grave-digger of 
millions. 

After the tomb had been prepared, and the 
coffin finished to his taste, Dexter, with a few 
of his cronies, got up a mock funeral, sup- 
posed by many at the time to be a real one. 
He had, by giving to his wife, son and 
daughter, suits of mourning and money to 
boot, engaged them, at last, to acquiesce 
in his whim. Cards were sent to certain 
persons in the town to attend the funeral. 
Some who had no misgivings, and all who 
desired a frolic, came at the hour appointed. 
Some wag, for he could not get a priest to 
perform the burial service, read it and pro- 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 47 

nounced a eulogy on the great man of the 
East. The procession moved to the garden- 
vault, the coffin was deposited, and the door 
locked. The assembled mourners returned 
to the large hall, where a sumptuous enter- 
tainment had been provided, and the choicest 
wines were poured out like water. Some 
one hinted that Dexter's ghost was seen at 
an upper window while the procession slow- 
ly moved to the vault, but this passed away, 
when a loud complaint was heard in the 
kitchen. It was lord Dexter caning his 
wife for not acting her part as she should 
have done in the ceremony. She had not 
shed a tear ! She should have cried to think 
it was not a reality. Dexter had been so 
much pleased in his concealment, in hearing 
of his praise, that he entered the wake-room 
with the highest glee ; shared in the wine, 
and threw small change from his window to 
the gaping crowd of boys who had gathered 
to witness the last solemn scene. These 
freaks amused a portion of the people, and 
did no great harm. The judicious grieved, 
but the mass loved fun. There was, how- 
ever, a drawback to his experiment; not a 
single bell toiled, when he expected the whole 
of them would have sounded a knell for his 
passing soul. That was not all ; not a requi- 
em was sung, except by the wag who per- 
formed the funeral services : he gave one that 



48 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

some bacchanalian had m former times com- 
posed for himself to be sung before his de- 
parture. Dexter expressed himself satisfied 
with every thing but the absence of the toll- 
ing bell, and his wife's dry eyes. His son 
had performed his part to admiration, being 
sufficiently drunk to weep without much 
effort. It is- said that his grief was so exces- 
sive that he required support as he entered 
the tomb ; at least, the old man was satisfied 
with his enactments. 

To guard his images and his fruit, he 
generally, in the summer season, kept a sen- 
try during the night. If the guard made no 
alarm he was pretty sure of being charged 
with neghgence of duty. He often had a 
shrewd old man as a watchman at the time 
when his cherries were ripening, and he 
had a most noble orchard of this excellent 
fruit, planted by the care of the original 
owner of the premises he possessed. For 
sev^eral nights the watchman made no alarm, 
and Dexter began to suspect that he was 
leagued with those who used to purloin his 
cherries. This he did not fail to make 
known to all. The next night, at the dead 
hour of darkness, two discharges of a mus- 
ket were heard. The inmates of the house 
rushed out half dressed and found the watch- 
man deploring the deed he had done ; blood 
was traced from one of the trees, on which 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 49 

a limb was broken, to the wall that divided 
the garden from the town street ; this was 
partly thrown down, and prints of hands 
and feet were seen in the clayey soil on 
which the victim had fallen, in his desperate 
exertions to escape ; and then the traces of 
blood were lost in the grass. 

The watchman was found in an agony 
of distress at the rash act, and threw all the 
blame, moral and legal, on his employer. 
Dexter was delighted, and was willing to 
take all responsibility. He was now amply 
revenged on the rascals who had plundered 
his garden. As a reward, he swore, in the 
plenitude of his dehght, that his faithful 
Watchman should be rewarded by fifty 
pounds of coffee. He had lately imported a 
cargo of coffee, and directed his wife to weigh 
it out. She, not having full coTifidence in 
the honesty of the- transaction, and beins^ 
prudent withal, gave the guard quite a small 
bag for one containing. fifty pounds. Dexter 
cast his eye upon it, and 'suspecting the 
cheat, most solemnly declared that his' wife 
should add five- fold for all deficiencies. The 
bag was weighed and fell sadly short. The 
quantity forfeited by the wife, when forth- 
coming, was more than the old man could 
shoulder, and he hired a hand cart to convey 
the coffee, the reward of his fidelity, to his 
own home. It was undoubtedly a hoax, but it 
5 



60 LIFE OF DEXTER.' 

answered two purposes, without wounding 
any one. It satisfied Dexter, and frightened 
away the Httle thieving rascals, who had 
wishfully eyed his fruit, if they had not, as 
yet, made an attempt to furtively gain it. ' 
The people from the country who came 
to make a visit to the sea-board and to catch 
a sea-breeze were his favorites. They came 
for a frolic and enjoyed it. They knew his 
weak side, and flattered him to his heart's 
content, and for their pains saw all his curi- 
osities, had free access to his garden, and fed 
deliciously upon ripe currants, gooseberries, 
pears and plums, as happened to be ripe, and 
not unfrequently drank his brandy and wa- 
ter, or partook of his good wines. If he 
was at times a little free in his remarks, they 
took no notice of it, as they visited him in 
such large bodies that no one felt particu- 
larly aggrieved, and all departed in good 
glee. On one or these visits, which fell un- 
der the writer's observation, the country 
damsels carried on the fun so far as to beg a 
lock of his hair, now growing gray, for a 
locket. One wished for a lock that had be- 
come entirely gray, another beginning to 
turn so ; and, believing them all, the locks 
of the Adonis were pretty well shorn ; but 
it is more than probable they were all shorn 
from a wig. If this were the case, he must 
have been delighted at the joke ; for he loved 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 51 

to deceive as well as to be deceived. He 
was never satisfied with any thing natural ; 
tricks without malice made up the great 
amusement of his latter days. He devised 
it in the morning and cherished it at night, 
and no doubt but that it filled his dreams. 

There were times in which he quite as- 
tounded his acquaintances by his remarks, 
half wisely and half foolishly said. When 
every paper was teeming with lord Thur- 
low's famous speech in the house of lords, 
" When I forget my king may God forget 
me," he travestied it to " When I forget my- 
self may God forget me," and many thought 
his more sincere than the chancellor's, which 
seemed to smack of political ambition. 

One of Dexter's amusements was to ex- 
amine many times a day his clocks and 
watches, in which his hous^ abounded. In 
general, he had selected those of curious 
workmanship and of great value. Once a 
week he had them regulated and set a run- 
ning. And to those that behaved best, to use 
his own phrase, he gave great names, some- 
times most ridiculously inappropriate. He 
daily talked to his chronometers as things 
of life, and threatened to sell them if they 
did not go well. If they got out of order 
he sent for his friend T. B., a very ingenious 
watchmaker ; a man of singularities, but of 
no moral aberrations. He indulged in harm- 



52 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

less, but sometimes Strange views of mental 
philosophy ; and Dexter's mind was to him 
a subject of much thought and analysis. 
He had the entire confidence of the great 
man of the East, and could draw from him all 
his honest opinions, whenever he had any 
that existed for a minute at a time. One 
day when the artist was regulating clocks 
and watches, which was no easy task, as 
many of them were of complicated work- 
manship, a conversation arose upon the na- 
ture of time. Dexter gave it as his opinion 
that time was part of the atmosphere, for 
some of his clocks, he said,' showed when it 
was going to rain ; it was also a part of the 
heaven, for his clocks showed the growth 
and decrease of the moon. Then it was a 
part of the mind of man, for he could set 
one of the clocks so that it Avouldring a bell 
and wake him up at any hour of the night. 
At last, like Simonides, when questioned up- 
on the nature of God, who asked but a few 
hours at first to answer the question, and at 
the end of the time required a longer period, 
and so on until he refused to answer at all, 
Dexter gave it as his opinion that time was 
a shadow you could not catch with a hat 
like a butterfly, or shoot with a gun like a 
pigeon. 

Time is a subject that every one, what- 
ever calibre of mind he may possess, from 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 53 

the philosophical and poetical Young, to 
Shakspeare's Fool, attempts to discuss. 

" Good morrow, Fool," Q,uoth I. " No, sir," Quoth he, 

" Call me not, Fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune." 

And then he drew a dial from his poke, 

And looking at it with lack-lustre eye, 

Says very wisely, " It is ten o'clock ; 

Thus may we see," quoth he, " how the world wags ; 

'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine, 

And after an hour more it will be eleven ; 

And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, 

And then from hour to hour we rot and rot. 

And thereby hangs a tale." When I did hear 

The motley fool thus moral on the time, 

My lungs began to crow like chanticleer. 

That fools should be so deep contemplative, 

And I did laugh, sans intermission. 

An hour by his dial. O noble fool ! 

A worthy fool ! Motley 's the only wear. 

The fit of talking upon philosophy was 
still upon him, and he said that it was a 
great puzzle to him that God suffered man 
to do what he had not done himself. " Look 
at all these trees," said he, " there are no two 
of them alike ; no two pen now going along 
in the street are alike ; there are two of no- 
thing alike, yet you can make my clocks 
and watches so much alike that they do not 
vary a minute in a month. This is strange 
to me, and I have come to the conclusion, 
Mr. T. B., that man is a wonderful toad ! 
Sometimes I think he is a woodchuck, and 
digs a hole to keep out of sight, until he 
gets a fair chance for the clover; now he 
looks to me like a weasel that can creep in- 
to a small place to catch a rat : sometimes 
5* 



54 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

he is as cunning as a fox, then as stupid 
as a jackass, and pretty generally, I do not 
know what the d — 1 to make of him." There 
was a pause, but the philosophizing spirit 
had not departed. 

At length he resumed, " Mr. B., what do 
you think of our ministers in this town ? are 
they, in your opinion, honest men?" " O ! 
certainly," replied the philosopher, who was 
the best natured man in the world, "excel- 
lent men," enumerating them, and giving 
each his peculiar characteristics, to the extent 
of a longer eulogy than was his custom to 
give, for he wished to impress on Dexter's 
mind a respect for the holy men. " Well, 
well," said Dexter, " 1 suppose they are 
good men ; but I want to know why they 
do not agree any better? they are always at 
sword's points, and will not enter each other's 
pulpits, or hardly nod at each other in the 

streets. M — — says, that Dr. S 's god 

is his devil ; and M again says that an 

Antinomian cannot go to heaven. I once 
asked lawyer P., who knows every thing, 
and as much again, what an Antinomian 
was ; he told me in a minute that it was ' an 
old stingy fellow who would not go to law, 
and cheated the lawyer of his fees.' " "So 
you see he had got one member on his side, 
and that is pretty well for the lawyers." 
"Mr. B.," said Dexter, "I should like this 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 65 

parson M ; he has a good voice, which 

makes the house ring again, and he is not 
afraid to roast sinners to a crisp ; but then 
he has too much of the Alphin and the Ome- 
gi7i for me," meaning that he dealt too much 
in declamatory sentences, such as, "I am 
Alpha and Omega — the beginning and the 
end, the first and the lasV The thunders 
of the gospel were more familiar to his 
tongue than the cooings of the dove, or the 
whispers of love, and the musical organs of 
Dexter were nicely attuned. One fact, in 
proof that if 

'.' The man that has no music in himself, 
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils," 

that he who has, is not necessarily great. 
The artist now wished, at this stage of the 
conversation, to avoid it altogether. But not 
so with Dexter; he continued, " I dare say 
that all our ministers are clever fellows, 
Mr. B., but 1 wish you and I had the wind- 
ing of them up ; if we had, they would not 
tick so loud, and would go better than they 
now do." So it falls out that one class of 
men are critics upon others, and even Pope 
acknowledged that Dennis had some truth 
in his satire. 

In one of his paroxysms. Dexter ordered 
his son to take the gun and fire at a person 
in the street, who was, as he thought, too 



66 LIFE OF DEXTER, 

impudently or sneakingly viewing the pre- 
mises. The young man had principle and 
feeling enough to decline ; but the father, 
drawing a pistol, swore he would shoot him, 
if he did not obey at once. The son fired, 
and either by intention or good fortune, 
struck the fence, near the traveller. A com- 
plaint was made to the magistrates, who ad- 
judged Dexter to the county house of cor- 
rection, for several months. He then made 
a bargain with the officer who was ordered 
to attend him to his place of confinement 
to suffer him to ride in his own coach to the 
county-house, in the town of Ipswich. The 
officer attended on horseback, and Dexter 
amused himself by jollification and ribaldry 
all the way, to the astonishment of the good 
people they passed. The disgrace at first 
was nothing to the pleasure he felt, from 
thinking that he was the first man sent to 
the house of correction who went in his own 
carriage, drawn by two splendid horses. In 
this state of confinement he grew sober, and 
began to feel the degradation of his situation, 
and to be solicitous of being relieved. This 
was effected, but not without considerable 
expense. It was said, at the time, to have 
cost him over a thousand dollars to get out 
of the scrape. 

There are many of more intellect than 
Dexter possessed, who have stolen through 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 57 

life without censure or notice, and passed as 
clever sort of men, in their way. It was 
Dexter's misfortune to have made himself an 
object of notoriety. He was mentally feeble, 
but his wealth gave him opportunities for 
display. Strong minds, under the influence 
of whim and caprice, often provoke a sneer 
from those of more moderate capacity. 
Many who attempted to take advantage of 
him got sadly deceived. He had no small 
share of cunning, when all seemed to have 
departed from him. He by direct or indi- 
rect means attained correct opinions upon 
the value of goods and lands, an4 seldom 
made an injudicious speculation. He dip- 
ped into the Ohio lands to great advantage, 
if the first executor on his estate had been 
sagacious and sold it at the right time. Al- 
though Dexter affected to dash onward as 
a leader, yet he drew all opinions from the 
public voice, constantly placing his ear 
wherever public opinion was to be caught. 
If he was not a profound calculator, he was 
a ready reckoner and came to results rapidly. 
There was no dulness about him. His ele- 
ments, however shallow, were in constant 
motion. Sometimes it was thought that he 
seriously questioned his own greatness : but 
such rational moments did not frequently 
occur, and visions of distinction flitted be- 
fore him oftener than any other. Now and 



58 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

then a pious fit came over his mind, and he 
was determined to seek fame and heaven 
together, by becoming a patron to the 
church. He did not regard the satirical re- 
mark of the bard, 

" Who builds a house to God and not to Fame,. 
Will scarcely mark the marble with his name ;" 

but connected the idea of the constant 
sounds of a church-going bell with " the 
whistling of a name." Dexter's gifts were al- 
ways marked with the name of the donor. 
The face of his presented clocks and bells 
contained his name ; but gratitude has not 
retained them all The brush has passed 
over the former, and the latter have been 
exchanged at the foundery, for others of a 
larger size, or different tone ; and the newly 
cast ones contain nothing of the former 
inscriptions. Was he much to blame? If 
every particle of vanity was extracted from 
every charity of life, how little would be the 
residuum ! Vanity is a natural, if not a 
necessary ingredient, in all the eleemosynary 
acts. This vanity is often easily disguised, 
but, nevertheless, it exists. Dexter, like 
many others, had no balance-wheel to his 
mind, or regulator to his tongue, particularly 
when there were no dollars and cents in the 
business. With all his follies, he could not 
be called a hard master ; for he paid all his 
workmen fairly, according to his agreement, 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 59 

but was sharp in making his bargains. He 
insisted that every laborer was worthy of 
his hire. A laughable instance of this has 
often been related of him. One of his family 
being sick, he sent for a clergyman to com- 
fort and pray with her. As he was about 
to depart, Dexter ottered the holy man his 
fee. This was declined by the clergyman 
and insisted on by Dexter, who unquestiona- 
bly had the best of the argument. Finding 
all entreaty vain, the master of the house, 
ended the debate at the muzzle of a pistol. 
How few rewards were ever so enforced! 
From th6 lily hand of him who baptizes, 
and him who offers the firmer grasp of the 
physician, up to the iron clench of the law- 
yer, was it ever before recorded, that a para- 
lytic stroke reached the hand extended to 
grasp a fee proffered by generosity ? 

There was a giant of a fellow, born some- 
where near the head waters of the Merri- 
mack, by the name of William Burley. He 
stood six feet seven inches high without his 
shoes. His frame was compact and strong. 
His hands were large and his feet monstrous. 
He was the champion of every wrestling ring 
within fifty miles of the place of his birth. 
He had heard of Dexter and went to see 
him. They were mutually pleased with 
each other, and a bargain was soon made 
for Burley's services. The laborer was to 



60 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

do double work, eat a double portion of food, 
and do all Dexter's fighting, on condition 
that he was saved harmless from the effects 
of the law. Burley told his employer, that 
he was generally called Dwarf Billy ^ by 
way of distinction, and had no objection to 
the name. For some time the dwarf was 
seen industriously at work in the garden and 
field, much to the satisfaction of Dexter, 
who would go down to his field, sit upon a 
large basket of corn or pumpkins, and make 
the dwarf take the whole load on his back to 
the barn. He was so fond of the dwarf that 
he would spend no small part of the day 
with him to witness his feats of strength, 
which he would take great pains to make 
known to his neighbors. 

While Burley was in the service of Dex- 
ter, a bold and boisterous sea captain made 
the Eccentric a visit and examined his house 
and grounds; but having '•'• jndled at the 
halyards''^ too freely, was quite unci vir and 
found fault with every thing he saw. Dex- 
ter became so vexed that he threatened to 
call his men and drive him off. This was 
amusmg to the captain, who dared Dexter 
to send any three of his men to him, and he 
would give them fair play. Dexter now 
thought of Burley, who had been so good 
natured about the house that Dexter had 
forgotten all about his fighting powers. Be- 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 61 

fore the dwarf was sent for, the captain took 
from his pocket a guinea and offered to wa- 
ger it that no two men that Dexter had, 
could get him fairly from the premises hy 
corporeal strength. The bet was accepted. 
Billy came, and stood before the captain with 
his arms bare, his shirt collar open, and 
throwing on his antagonist a fierce look, 
turned to his employer and said, " Lord Dex- 
ter, do you wish me to skin him before 1 eat 
bim, or not stop for that?" " Do as you 
please," said Dexter, highly amused to see 
how the captain looked. The captain eyed 
the man-monster for some time, put his 
guinea in his lordship's hands, saying, " Ej 
Jupiter? if this is your dwarf, how big are 
your giants?" Dexter handed the guinea 
over to Bill, whoquitecomposedly put it into 
his pocket, and taking up a handful of ap- 
ples, presented them to the departing guest, 
with a speech. " Captain, it is a good deal 
better to eat a few good apples than to fight 
even a dwarf ! You may say that apples 
are big as an eighteen pound cannon-ball, 
at Halifax, but don't say that they are quite 
as large as my head, where I am." The 
dwarf soon got tired of his employer's ca- 
prices, and left him. 

Dexter was not only amusing in himself, 
but not unfrequently the cause of wit and 
merriment in others. Towards the close of 
6 



62 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

his career a stranger came to Newbnryport, 
and wishing to see lord Dexter, sent him a 
note, requesting the honor of an interview, 
understanding that his lordship, at times, 
was quite accessible. At this moment, " the 
great eccentric" was quite indisposed hav- 
ing the night before 

" Like great Caesar reeled sublime to bed," 

and of course his attendant did not give him 
the note ; but the colored woman who was 
then reigning empress of the domains took 
the letter to one of her distinguished patrons 
and wished him to send an answer. The 
gentleman was at dinner with a young 
friend, and they thinking the writer of the 
note was a foreigner who had been finding 
fault with every thing in the country, and 
boasting most egregiously of his own, 
thought they would have some amusement 
with him. An answer was returned stating 
that, owing to the severe indisposition of 
some part of his family, lord Dexter would 
not receive the gentleman at his cha- 
teau, but would be happy to meet him at 
eight o'clock that evening at the Bridge inn, 
to share in a little supper of birds. The 
note was written on rose paper and sealed 
with a lordly impression. The friends pre- 
pared themselves for the interviewv The 
oldest, who was to represent lord Dexter, 
wore a salmon-colored coat that had formerly 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 63 

belonged to a French marcjuis who nad fled 
from St. Domingo, at the time of the revolu- 
tion, and had died at Newbury port ; the dis- 
guise was still further made out by a full- 
dressed wig of a fashion more than half a 
century gone by. The younger, who was 
to personate the son, had borrowed a drum- 
mer's or fifer's red, short coat, rathet too small 
for him, but which gave the air of higher 
gentility. It had been suggested in the an- 
swer to the stranger' s note, that as they seldom 
were at public places, he must not inquire 
for Dexter directly, but for the gentleman in 
the west room. The stranger was punctual ; 
but lord Dexter and his son had preceded 
him. As the stranger entered they saw they 
Avere out in their calculations, for instead of 
seeing the coarse, big, and burly foreigner, 
who had been talking of plums in his coun- 
try as long as goose-eggs, and cantelopes as 
large as a peck basket, they met a gentle- 
man of highly polished manners ; and they 
soon found him as intelligent as polished. As 
he entered, lord Dexter arose to receive him, 
with the grace and dignity of a prince. He 
extended to the stranger one of the most deli- 
cate hands that was ever presented in friend- 
ship or ceremony, adorned with rings of 
great brilliancy and value. The stranger, 
although acquainted with the world, ac- 
knowledged afterwards, that he had never 



64 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

witnessed such 'high-bred manners. The 
Slipper soon came in. His lordship asked 
the stranger if the bird should be carved 
after the style of the Roman Luculius or 
after the manner of the modern epicure, 
Quin. A smile played upon the face of the 
stranger, and he, bowing, preferred the Ro- 
man method, for he was not very distincily 
apprized of what that might be. The knife 
was drawn across the breast, and the 
division made transversely instead of lat- 
erally, separating, in a good measure, the 
white meat from the dark. " The Roman," 
said his lordship, " wished to have a good 
bite of the wing and breast to satiate his 
appetite, at first, and then pick upon the 
scanty dark meat to provoke a fresh appe- 
tite. Quin cut otherwise, because he wish- 
ed to provoke an appetite first, and then in- 
dulge it afterwards." "Quite philosophical," 
thought the stranger, '• for one of lord Dex- 
ter's reputation, but probably he has been 
misrepresented." After quite a discussion 
upon gastronomy, the politics of the day 
were introduced. The character of WilUam 
Pitt, the great premier of England, came on 
the tapis. The son now broke forth in his- 
torical eulogy of that great man. The po- 
litical state of the world made the back- 
ground of the picture. His father's virtues 
were seen shadowed at a distance, and the 



Life of dexter. 65 

former age of lord Holland, general Wolfe, 
with the embalmed malice of Junius, were 
forcibly depicted. Buonaparte was placed 
alongside of Pitt the younger, and their char- 
acteristics dwelt upon, until they were seen 
blazing abroad, and overshadowing the 
whole world. From politics they passed 
to literature and science, and in all, the 
stranger bore his part most admirably, now 
and then gazing with wonder upon his en- 
tertainers. A new race of poets were then 
just twinkling on the literary horjizon. Sou- 
they was then struggling through those Jac- 
obin mists, which so long obscured his noble 
genius. Campbell had breathed his strain 
of hope, and Coleridge had begim his song. 
Sir Walter Scott was then a clerk, who had 
now ventured a few stanzas only, and was 
still recording on the docket. " The- Pur- 
suits of Literature^ had just reached us, but 
the author was then not known. His taste, 
his vanity, his learning, his honest but oft- 
misguided satire, were subjects of passing 
remark. The stranger inquired for the 
American poets. They were presented to 
him in regular order, from the earliest his- 
tory of our country to the time of the con- 
versation, and fair analysis of them giveii. 
Lord Dexter now and then interspersed a 
shrewd and pointed remark, but yielded to 
his son, as being more conversant with mod-, 
ern subjects. 6^ 



66 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

l^he wine was excellent, and circulated 
freely. His lordship was at home in the 
science of the wine cup. He knew every 
vintage, on every soil, and now more than 
ever astonished the stranger. His lordship 
talked of every choice bottle from the Godol- 
phin down to old Row's sales. 

The subject of horses was alluded to ; 
the Sporting Magazine was a text book to his 
lordship. The history of the horse was fa- 
miliar to him, from the day he was first sub- 
jugated to man, to the barb and grey hound 
of the desert of the present hour. The con- 
versation was continued until late in the 
night, when the father and son took their 
carriage to go home. The stranger suggest- 
ed that he would follow, as he was not ac- 
quainted with the road. There was still a 
lurking suspicion in the stranger's mind that 
he was hoaxed. When Dexter and his son 
arrived at their chateau, the colored woman 
opened the gate, and they, wishing the 
stranger good night, rode in. His suspicions 
could exist no longer. He drove on, and 
they, waiting until he was out of sight, fol- 
lowed him. On viewing the subject the 
next day, they come to the conclusion that 
it was the proper course to make an expla- 
nation at once. The next morning they 
took a few friends with them and made the 
"amende honorable" to the stranger; by 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 67 

this time he had become acquainted with the 
braggadocio they intended to gull, and was 
as much disgusted with him as they were. 
All, therefore, was readily forgiven, and the 
stranger was treated in the most courteous 
manner. He was introduced to lord Dexter 
and his driveling son, and often amused his 
friends by the feelings and reasonings which 
passed his mind in his evening's entertain- 
ment. He used to say that he did not think 
that there were as many diamond rings in 
the whole city, as Dexter exhibited that 
night. Late as it was when he returned, he 
took down the evening's conversation, and 
read it at several dinners, to the no small 
amusement of his listeners. 

In some way or other Dexter and his 
family were constantly, for several years, 
before the public ; for every thing they did 
was noticed. The common currents of life 
make a smooth surface, and attract but lit- 
tle attention ; but on those waters where are 
seen a few ripples and whirlpools the eye is 
constantly direct'ed ; and it is no great mat- 
ter to the observer whether their agitations 
are made by a sea-serpent or a horned pout, 
or any other small fry. Diogenes, in his 
course of life, did not half as much good as 
lord Dexter, for Dexter employed and fed 
many men, while the Greek philosopher 
hardly fed himself. The difference between 



68 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

these great eccentrics was this, Diogenes 
wished even kings to get out of his sunshine, 
and Dexter wished his glory to shine on 
every fool who would worship him. 

Dexter, although he did not do much good, 
did not live in vain. The follies he was 
guilty of fell on himself and his family, but 
the public did not suffer much. He was 
guiltless of shedding his country's blood ; his 
ambition did not that way tend. He never 
aspired to the dreams of Condorcet, nor ter- 
rified the world with the dagger of Catiline. 
He sometimes affrighted his household with 
the discharge of a musket, but never aimed 
with sufficient precision to hit his. object. 
He never led mankind astray by false rea- 
soning, for he never reasoned. He had no 
influence in the social or political relations 
in life, for he was liardly within the pale of 
either circle. He never excited envy in the 
breast of any one. The beggar that receiv- 
ed his alms pitied the opulent giver. If there 
were those who repined at their want of for- 
tune, they thought of Dexter and ceased to 
grieve. The tyro at school used his name 
in his themes upon the vanity of riclies, and 
ran parallels between the poor with wisdom 
and the rich with folly. It was a good sub- 
ject and often discussed. Not unfrequently 
the youthful poet would launch a satirical 
rhyme at him, and even his dog did not es- 



LIFR OF DEXTEll. 69 

cape abuse for not having sagacity enough 
to read his master's character. He never 
rose to the ahitucle of hatred, nor to the dig- 
nity of scorn, but was named for the laugh- 
ter of the mu'thful and used by the grave 
" to point a moral or adorn a tale." There 
were none so jwor as to do him reverence. 

One autumnal morning tlie writer was 
passing Dexter's mansion quite early, and 
saw him talking with a group of women on 
horseback. Their appearance was more 
frightful than the weird sisters on the heath ; 
their attire was entirely tatterdemalion; their 
faces begrimed with din and smoke ; their 
eyes haggard and sunken, and' their bonnets 
of every hue, and dingy in all. The horses 
on which they were mounted were nearly 
skeletons, and out-rosinanted Rosinante him- 
self The horse of Don Quixote, from the 
military panoply of his master, armed with 
a spur, had a touch of chivalry in him; but 
all fire had departed from the vision of their 
shadows of horses. The dialogue between 
the " ivise man of the East'^ and those 
skinny, choppy-fingered witches could not 
be distinctly heard, but the laugh was 
screamy and obstreperous. The conversa- 
tion lasted some time before they took up 
their line of march on their skeletons. From 
what was caught by the ear at their parting, 
the belief then was. that there had been a 



70 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

trial of wit and sharp sayings between the 
women and lord Dexter, for they rode off 
with faces full of broad humor, while his 
bore marks of defeat. From whence came 
these imps the witness could not at that time 
conjecture, but on inquiry found they were 
" Dog-»Towners," people who inhabited a 
heath about five or six miles distant from the 
Merrimack. The next day the writer with 
a friend made them a visit. The travellers 
entered a dreary looking tract of neglected 
land, evidently thought by the owners too 
poor for cultivation. A few wretched huts 
were scattered over the barren spot, among 
brush and weeds, with smoke issuing from 
every part of the roofs of the cabins. The 
horses seen the day before near the palace, 
were here and there browsing upon thistles, 
wire grass and blackberry vines, looking full 
of misery. The crows were cawing over 
their heads, with whetted beaks, impatient for 
their natural rights, the possession of their 
carcasses, when the few sands of the wretched 
jades had run through the hour-glass of their 
existence. The ominous croakings seemed 
evidently to occupy/ the minds of the wo- 
begone steeds. Among the bushes were seen 
the women gathering whortleberries, black- 
berries and various wild herbs, such as tho- 
rough-wax, pennyroyal, white weed, mul- 
lein, five-fingers, yellow dock, scullcap, with 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 71 

Other herbs half domesticated, as saffron, 
hyssop, and balm. The herbs and berries 
were for the next day's market. On looking 
into the cabins we found an abundance of 
children, but not any men excepting one or 
two decrepit old fellows, past service ; the 
others, we understood, had gone a macker- 
elling. The children of both sexes were 
without hats, bonnets or shoes, and had but a 
scanty rag to cover them. The outer layer 
of their hair was bleached to a brown flax 
color, of whatever natural hue it might 
have been originally. Their feet felt no- 
thing but the sharpest thorns ; they scoffed 
at the brier and complained not of stone- 
crushes. These children were as agile as 
young goats of the mountains, and but a lit- 
tle more intelligent. They were unacquaint- 
ed with misery, for they were above the ills 
of life. Among the children were seen a few 
stunted swine, squealing around the hovels. 
They were the most sensitive of all the crew. 
There were also a few barn-fowl, the only 
well fed creatures we saw, for they were rev- 
elling on clouds of grasshoppers. To make 
up the group there were several cows of Pha- 
raoh's lean kine, with a bell hanging between 
their horns to direct the ear of the heath-born 
urchins who looked after the cows straying 
from the neighboring cabins ; we did not see 
any spinning-wheel, loom or instrument of 



72 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

husbandry. There was, however, one branch 
of manufacture carried on even here ; it was 
that of distillation. A few small stills were 
then in operation, for making tansy water, 
mint drops and similar essences. We bought 
there several bottles of rosewater of a most 
exquisite flavor. It was distilled from the 
leaves of the Eglantine. This species of the 
wild rose abounds in that region, and by 
long usage is the property of the herb- wo- 
men, and never gathered by the owners of 
the pastures in which it grows. The 
friend of the writer, more fond of drawing 
landscapes than of shooting the wild pigeons, 
then plentiful thereandall around, sketched a 
view of Dog- Town and adorned it with some 
figures of these weird sisters, over a still, 
drawing the alcoliol from herbs, as was prac- 
tised at Bagdad some nine hundred years be- 
fore it was known on the Newbury borders. 
The sketch was graphic; the smoke of the 
alembic arose curling around the heads of 
the females watching the process; an old tat- 
tered remnant of a petticoat was "thrown 
over their heads to keep off a scorching sun 
of the last of August. The figures were all 
to the life. The writer remarked that in 
some distant day, the picture might be 
read in the heraldry of some family, as the 
priestess of Nature, interrogating her mother 
to disclose her secrets. All tliat was to be 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 73 

done to effect the change was only to soften 
the hard features of the females, give a fash- 
ionable air to the ragged garments, call the 
old black petticoat the veil of Isis, and in- 
scribe this motto to the picture, " Hygeia 
in herbas." and the metamorphosis would be 
effected. By elevating the imagination and 
producing new creations from old ones, and 
from trivial incidents, a thousand greater 
changes were made in former days. The 
laureate of some future Dexter may seize the 
images and prove his patron to have descend- 
ed from the great and early benefactors of 
mankind, who taught the virtues of vegeta- 
ble medicines. 

The next morning the cavalcade made 
their appearance in the city, and as they 
reached the borders of it filed off in separate 
directions to supply their particular custom- 
ers, for all who traffic have a system of their 
own of doing business. 

It would strike one as almost impossible 
that such a colony should exist within six 
miles of a beautiful and enlightened town. 
But few seemed to know any more about 
them than that they were Dog-Towners and 
supplied the town with herbs and berries. 
Ten thousand prayers have arisen from the 
holy altars of that pious town for the hea- 
then who walk in darkness, and are perish- 
ing for lack of vision ; but who ever heard a 
' 7 



7!4 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

single aspiration to heaven for a blessing 6n 
the colony of Dog-Town ? Once, and again, 
have the generous hearts of the inhabitants 
of that good place, Newbnryport, beat high 
at the departure of holy men, missionaries to 
the heathen, who went forth loaded with 
presents and wafted onward by blessings, to 
bring the Hindoos within the pale of Christ- 
ianity, to break every spoke in the accursed 
wheels of the car of Juggernaut, and to op- 
pose by holy violence the tenth incarnation 
of Brahma, and who were there that did not 
feel a portion of the enthusiasm generally 
exhibited at such times. But would it not 
be wiser to think of those who perish for 
lack of vision near us? I speak of times 
gone by, before home missionaries were 
thought of All may now be changed, for 
aught I know. 

But to my point; miserable as these beings 
of Dog-Town were, they still were possessed 
of some character, for they did all they could 
in their sphere, and they despised him who 
fell short of his duty. They laughed at the 
folly of Dexter as well as their betters, and 
felt that they were every way above him. 
They were bound to a hard-hearted soil that 
refused to pay the laborer, but they picked 
up a few of the foundling germs of nature, 
and by industry and perseverance made a 
new class of statistics in national traffic ; 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 75 

while the possessor of great wealth was then 
frittering away the stores a blind fortune had 
showered upon his head, casting them away 
without feeling or without principle. 

Man, a little beside himself, is the most 
unreasonable of all animals. Dogs and horses 
belonging to those accustomed to 1>eing ine- 
briated will come to the succor of their mas- 
ters. The Avriter remembers a spirited horse 
that no blows would drive to a quick pace 
when he felt his master reeling on his back. 
It was said that Dexter's doi^ would never 
leave his master's feet when he was at all 
intoxicated. What a satire on the presump- 
tion of man, who arrogates to himself to be 
lord of creation ! 

A rich man of eccentricities will always 
gather around him strange associates, and 
Dexter could boast of many such. Among 
those who early had an influence over him 

John P may be named. He was of 

a respectable family, from which at a ten- 
der age he became an outcast. He was a 
being possessed of high powers of taste, im- 
agination and invention. He had in the 
common paths of life gleaned something in 
the form of knowledge, and could make 
most dexterous use of it among the mass of 
mankind. He was a splendid chirographist, 
and this was then the great desideratum for 
a school-master, to which honor he aspired; 



76 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

but with a discreet school committee his 
morals would not answer, notwithstanding 
their impressions of his genius and learning. 
Having been rejected as a candidate for one 
of the town schools, he opened a private one, 
and for a while attracted attention and had 
a respectable number of pupils. The writer 
of this memoir, then only nine years of age, 
was among them. John P • was a dare- 
devil in some things and a coward in others, 
a man of perpetual contradictions in his 
characteristics. Be gulled the world with 
pretensions to occult sciences, while he knew 
but little of any practical branch of know- 
ledge. He" set up claims to judicial astrolo- 
gy and cast nativities for those who were 
credulous enougii to believe in the science, 
and sometimes appeared a sincere believer 
in his own calculations. He said of him- 
self that he should never die until the sun 
was blotted out of the heavens, and, to fix 
the credulity of thousands, expired in a mis- 
era-ble mansion on the 16th of June, 1806, 
during the great and total eclipse of the sun 
on that day. He was stretched on his death- 
bed, so exhausted thg,t he could not raise 
himself without assistance to gaze on the 
phenomenon. Being supported by some one, 
and handed a piece of smoked glass to look 
at the sun, he reverted to his former prophe- 
cy, and at the moment of total darknesSj 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 11 

when all nature around him seemed distress- 
ed, the chill of death came over him and he 
expired without a sigh. However natural 
may be such death, superstition never forgets 
such an instance, but treasures it up in the 
memory, and it has its influence for years to 
come, if not on the conduct,- certainly on the 
feelings of many. One of the freaks of this 
eccentric man was, as he called it, to test his 
pupils' pluck. One instance the writer can 
never forget. A blind preacher, by the name 
of Prince, died, and during his last moments 
requested to be buried in the tomb with the 
celebrated George Whitefield and the rever- 
end Jonathan Parsons. Whitefield had died 
in Newburyport, in 1770, and a vault was 
made for him under the first Presbyterian 
church in the town, and Parsons was laid 
by his side a few years afterwards. This 
was the only tomb under or near the build- 
ing. It was opened a day or two before the 
funeral of blind Prince, and hundreds visited 
it. " Whitefield and Parsons had been buried 
in their surplices and wigs, which remained, 
after so many years, tender, or nearly rotten, 
but entire. Every visiter stole a piece of 
the holy relics to carry away and preserve. 
At the close of the afternoon lessons the 
school-master and astrologer took a pupil to 
the vault and showed him the remains. The 
entrance was by a trap door in the broad- 



78 • ' LIFE OF DEXTER* 

aisle of the meeting-house. A small lamp 
was glimmering over the sacred ashes of the 
two pious divines. The wicked teacher saw 
that the boy Avas in a profound reverie, and 
silently stole out of the tomb, and shutting 
the trap door, departed. The child heard 
the trap door close, and for an instant trem- 
bled at the thought of being alone in the 
charnel-house; but he instantly recovered 
himself, and stood composedly gazing on 
those who slept beneath. Can the departed 
spirits of good men injure children? was the 
question put to himself This was soon set- 
tled in his mind, and he taxed* his memory 
for all the anecdotes of them which he had 
heard from his pious mother, who had often 
listened to the orator Whitefield, during 
his arousing appeals to those who went on 
in life '' sleeping on the confines of eternity 
and walking unconcerned over the Itottomless 
pit.^'' The child of the tomb at that hour 
is still living, and has been frequently heard 
to say that he dates back to that period the 
reverence in which he ever holds the dead. 
How long he was there he could not say 
precisely, but it was the time the school- 
master took to go srome distance, and drink 
tea with the boy's mother. As the astrolo- 
ger finished his last cup, fie told the mother 
the position in which he had left her son to 
test his courage. The indignant woman 



LIFE OF DEXTER. Tft 

sent him immediately to the release of her 
child, desiring an elder boy to go with the 
monster, as she called him, to see that he 
went directly to the church. She was dis- 
turbed, but at once observed ''the boy will 
sustain himself, I know his character :" still 
the fondness and fearfulness of the mother 
lingered beneath the guise of the pious he- 
roine. When the prisoner returned not a 
word passed between him and his mother on 
the subject, and months elapsed before either 
alluded to the circumstance. 

Such was the man who for several years 
was the director of the mind of Dexter. He 
at once understood the calibre of the success- 
ful fool, and took the proper course to man- 
age him. The astrologer pretended to ini- 
tiate his patron into the occult arts and sci- 
ences, and exhibited his books of necroman- 
cy treating of Druidical rites and abounding 
in Runic characters. There can be no doubt 
that at the conclusion of the lessons both the 
master and pupil's information was nearly 
the same. The writer has the most vivid 
recollection of the astrologer and his school- 
house. Under a widely spreading elm of the 
first class, which probably had been spared 
by the early settler, on the south side of 
High street, between what are now State 
and South streets, in Newburyport, there 
was a small cottage containing one room ; 



So LIFE OF DEXTER* 

this was the school-room of master P— — — « 
His manners were familiar, his discipline 
lax, and his punishments few and not se- 
vere. He taught by conversation and lec- 
tures ; and so happy were his illustrations 
that his boys of ten years old were superior 
to those of other schools at fifteen. He had 
several maps and charts, and spent hours 
each day in showing his pupils the different 
parts of the globe. When geography was 
not a study in the common schools, his boys 
could chalk out a tolerable map on the floor 
and name the large cities and great rivers 
of different countries. He knew a smatter- 
ing of chemistry, and performed many ex- 
periments in natural philosophy; but, so little 
understood was the science of chemistry at 
that time, these experiments were called 
tricks. He had been taught some optical 
illusions, which excited wonder among his 
pupils. He would take them into the Avoods 
and fields and teach them the names of trees' 
and plants, and of the birds as they flew by. 
It was so much more delightful to go to 

master P * than to other schools, that no 

scholar that had been with him ever return- 
ed cheerfully to the other instructers. The 
rare books he possessed were sometimes 
shown to his favorite pupils, and he explain- 
ed their uses to them, laughing at the credu- 
lity of the world. He introduced athletic 



LIFE OF DEXTER. m 

sports and superintended them himself, which 
was a most scandalous affair to the other 
grave teachers. One of them went so far as 
to say that he had gone in a swimming with 
his boys and showed them how to acquire 
the art ! what gross impropriety, thought 
the dull teachers. The writer's memory has 
hardly lost a single occurrence of that mem- 
orable epoch; and on reviewing the man and 
his course, although he must confess that 
the extent of his knowledge of science was 
small, and there was a great deal of charla- 
tanry about him as a teacher, yet he pro- 
nounces him a man of extraordinary poAvers 
of mind, and one who more than any other 
had a forecast of what instruction should be. 
It is indeed a misfortune for a man to live 
before his age, or rather in advance of it.. 
After all, he lived with a good-sense people, 
and might have been respectable had he been 
less profligate in his habits, or more guarded 
in his conduct. He foolishly ridiculed what 
he called superstition, and satirized stupidity 
wherever he found it. He made himself 
hated by coining soubriquets for his neighbors 
that often had point and sarcasm in themj 
and too much truth to make a palatable joke 
of He took more pleasure in annoying 
dulness than in enlightening ignorance, and 
was never happier than when he could raise 
a laugh at any blockhead's expense. There 



! 

82 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

was no medium in any thing he did ; his 
generosity was prodigality, and his friendship 
enthusiasm, but his enmities died away as 
soon as he had succeeded in making his foe 
ridiculous. He was a kind and skilful 
watcher over a sick bed, and never appeared 
weary in administering to the comfort of 
the afflicted. He had a passion for being 
with the dying and the dead ; and he adjnst- 
ed the folds of the winding sheet with ex- 
quisite taste, and the grave digger's mattock 
and spade were lovely instruments in his 
eyes. He evinced a hatred to all lies on 
tomb-stones, and often made parodies on flat- 
tering epitaphs. One which ended in an 
old fashioned couplet, " Deaths by thy fiery 
darts thou hast me slain," he changed to 
'•'- Rum^ by thy," &c. which alteration mad 
a great noise at the time. 

Many stronger minds than that of Dex- 
ter have been at times under the influence 
of superstition. His was in constant thral- 
dom by its influence. Brutus saw Caesar's 
ghos,t, who promised to meet him at Philip- 
pia, and Buonaparte believed in presenti- 
ments, Fates and Fortunes. My lord Dexter 
had a great variety of fortune-telling works, 
dream books, and such valuable trash. Of- 
ten, not trusting entirely to one juggler, he 
would consult another, and sometimes they 
played into each other's hands. On the pur- 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 83 

lieus of the town there lived a singularly 
bold, intelligent woman, who went by the 
name of madam Hooper : the name she 
probably assumed, as it was a highly 
respectable one in the town in which she 
lived. She had made her appearance af- 
ter the peace «f 1763, and unquestionably 
had been an appendage to the English army 
in Canada. She gave out that she was the 
widow of a British officer, who fell with 
Wolfe. She had'received a'good education, 
particularly for that day. This woman ob- 
tained a school in the town, and taught fe- 
males with success ; but, at length, becomi,ng 
tired of the labor, she gave it up and lived 
on fortune-telling. She ,was wondrously 
shrewd, and made many admirable conjec- 
tures upon forth-coming time, by knowing 
the past events of the individual's life. She 
sometimes pretended that her charms refus- 
ed to work, and her applicants were sent 
away, to come again in a more propitious 
hour. This gave her an opportunity of hear- 
ing all the conjectures made upon the sub- 
ject. Then her Mephistopheles would obey 
the league and bring information. She had 
a masculine voice, and powerful arm, by 
which she could wield a sword, particularly 
a broad sword, with the skill and force of a 
fencing master. She was also an excellent 
shot with gun or pistol, and frequently 



84 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

amused herself by trials of skill, all alone, 
except she was watched by some wonder- 
struck boys who had taken pains to conceal 
themselves to witness her feats. Her con- 
versations generally partook of aphoristic 
fragments, enigmatical sentences, with up- 
lifted or downcast eyes, or attended with 
strange gestures ; and she not unfrequently 
closed her incantations with indistinct mut- 
terings, as if communing with invisible 
spirits. On a time Dexter had a bed of fine 
melons robbed, night after night, of the 
ripest and best of fruit. His astrologer 
could not give him any information on this 
subject, as it was nearly the full of the 
moon, the patroness of thieves, and the stars, 
by being further from the earth, refused to 
answer all inquiry at the time. The astrol- 
oger advised Dexter to apply to madam 
Hooper, as her conjuration was not affected 
by the moon or any other planet. Dexter, 
at length, applied to her. She called up the 
thief for her own satisfaction. She repre- 
sented him as a grave looking man, in drab 
clothes, one that was never suspected by the 
owner of the melons, but she distinctly told 
him how to find the house, and that there 
he would find several melons that had been 
marked by him. Precisely as he was di- 
rected, he did, and there were his melons, 
concealed, to be sold next day. She had 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 8^ 

now established her fame with Dexter. It 
was probably by a system of espoinage that 
she was able to do all this ; but it must be 
confessed, that many of her prophecies, inu- 
endoes, and even positive declarations, have, 
as yet, found no Sphinx to unriddle them. 
She was one of the best physiognomists in 
the world. She frequently made his lord- 
ship a visit, and asked for nothing she did 
not receive. She did not live long enough to 
see Dexter in his wane, but at her death he 
took into favor the celebrated Moll Pitcher, 
who lived at the very inconvenient distance 
of twenty-eight miles from his chateau ; but 
she was several times consulted by Dexter. 
The first time he visited the dame he went 
in disguise; but she soon found him out, but, 
concealing the fact, told all that had happen- 
ed to him for many years past, and this 
chained him at once to the full belief of the 
potency of her spells. Pitcher was a shrewd 
woman, without education, and Dexter 
sympathized with her more readily, and un- 
derstood her better, than he did the learned 
dame Hooper. He was afraid of the latter, 
but he came within the magic circle of the 
other without any dread. The history of 
these women might be pursued until the 
wise would blush, and the judicious grieve, 
to find how many of good sense in most 
things have made fools of themselves, by 



86 LIFE OT DEXTER. 

clandestinely consulting these fortune-tellers. 
The belief that the dev^l allows some of his 
imps to know something hid from the wise 
was an early impression, and one tiiat will 
last as long as man exists, but such is the 
progress of common sense that the evils that 
once flowed from this error have ceased to 
be in any degree alarming. Dexter, in all 
probability, saved money by his acquaint- 
ance with these persons, reputed to know 
every one who trespassed upon his premises. 
But few men or boys dared under the cover 
of darkness to run the risk of encountering 
those who dealt in supernatural agency. 
Such is human nature, that many, who af- 
fect to despise all stories of hobgoblins and 
witches in the sunshine, are confoundedly 
afraid of them in the dark, parti,cularly 
when doing what their consciences teach 
them to be wrong. To guard his fruit, a 
few sentinels, man-traps and spells of en- 
chanters, united, gave his garden a security 
that the Hespe rides never was sure of, ur;- 
der the potent spells of the dragon ; and 
there is no more insidious and formidable 
foe than the boys of a city are to the or- 
chards of the vicinity. 

We have mentioned Dexter's literary taste 
as being greater than his acquirements. He, 
in emulation of the kings of England, select- 
ed a poet laureate ; never was there a more 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 87 

admirable selection. Their tastes, their ge- 
nius, and, in some measure, their course of 
Hfe, were suited to each other. The name 
of the bard was rather unpoetical, being 
Jonathan Plummer; but at that time that 
wicked wag, lord Byron, had not said 
"Amos Cottle Phoebus ! what a name." He 
was younger than his patron by more than 
twenty years ; but was wonderfully grave 
for his age. He was born near Gravel hill, 
in the town of Newbury, a large ancient 
town, from which Newbury port had been 
taken, a few years before the revolution. 
Unlike most poets, he died near the very 
spot of his birth-place. He was a strange 
and wayward boy, had a great fondness for 
reading, and possessed a remarkable memo- 
ry. At about sixteen or eighteen years of 
age, he attended a meeting of religious enthu- 
siasts who worshipped God in the woods 
and fields. Here, while listening to the 
ranting of field preachers, his genius blazed 
forth, and he spoke like one of gifts and 
graces. His voice was deep toned and sol- 
emn, and of great compass, and his dis- 
courses were often graced with anecdotes 
from his miscellaneous reading. He soon 
announced to the world his intention of de- 
voting his days to the holy calling of saving 
souls, and abandoned his former honest call- 
ing of selling halibut from a wheelbarrow, 



88 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

at fair weight ancl low prices ; a fat firi cut 
for two coppers a pound, the more solid 
parts for a copper; and when there was a 
more plentiful supply, even a ''^ Brwna^em)'' 
would buy enough to furnish a man a din- 
ner. When the halibut were gone, he used 
his wheelbarrow as a vehicle from which he 
vended straw for under beds, and, for years, 
he managed this business. He, at times, 
under his mass of straw concealed certain 
publications, that were frowned at, if not 
prohibited, at common law. He sold Hoyle 
to young men, and a copy of Bonnel Thorn- 
ton's poems might be had of him ; but when 
he became a student in divinity all these 
sources of profit failed, for it was not decor- 
ous now to deal in these matters; but as 
genius is always full of resources, he soon 
appeared in another sphere of letters. He 
seized all the terrible accidents^ drownings^ 
suicides^ and harigings^ and ornamenting his 
sheet with coffins, and spreading it out with 
eulogies, elegies, and warnings^ in prose 
and verse, he ushered them to the public 
from a literary cabinet, as he called the bas- 
ket on his arm. This was a profitable 
trade, for he added to this Piei-ian stock a box 
of Hygeian pills, or a tincture in phials for 
certain cures and preventives, (fee- At times, 
for a few cents, he would recite his own 
compositions, or those he had committed to 



LIFE OF DEXTER. B9 

memory ; and, if in an affected manner, yet 
that manner was not without effect. Dur- 
ing some months in the winter he retired to 
the country, and kept school, and was not 
unfrequently quite a popular master, for in 
his day there were districts in which the 
question among the school committee was, 
not " what does he know?'' but " how cheap 
can we get him?'' 

His whole business now was with the 
Muses, in one or more of their capacities, as 
inspirers or teachers of mankind. In the 
bright and sweet risings of his fame, but 
while he yet wore the clerical habit, his pro- 
ductions caught the eye of the " greatest 
Tnan of the East f^ an introduction was 
readily had, for wealth makes no ceremony 
of entering the temples of learning. The 
divine had never received a call, although 
his fame had been widely spread. How of- 
ten do we see prosing dulness take the place, 
ay, the precedency of exalted talents. Per- 
haps thinking he should never rise to a bene- 
fice^ he closed with a proposal to enter the ser- 
vice of Dexter as poet laureate. The stipend, 
for genius can never stoop to salaries, was 
small, but he was furnished with a singularly 
splendid livery. It consisted in a long, blacky 
frock coat, with stars on the collar, and also 
at the front corners ; tliis livery also was 
fringed, where fringes could be put; a black 



90 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

under dress, shoes and large buckles, with a 
large cocked hat, and a gold-headed cane, 
made out the dress. The poet laureate began 
his reign by eulogies in prose and verse, and 
for some time the poet and patron were mu- 
tually happy ; but after a while Jonathan 
found that his muse could not produce flat- 
tery half as fast as the cormorant appetite 
of his patron demanded, and when he did 
concoct an article of the kind it was not half 
as saleable as the wonderful matters Avhich 
he gathered for his calender of strange events. 
A religious scruple came over his conscience ; 
in a dream he had learned that it was sinful 
to wear frmges ; this scruple he imparted to 
his patron, who ridiculed the impression as 
nonsensical. This was too much for the lau- 
reate : still, however, after mutual jealousies 
and scoldings on one side, and mutterings on 
the other, they patched up treaties of peace, 
which lasted until the death of the patron. 

Jonathan expected to be remembered in 
the will of Timothy, but he was not, and 
his grief could not be assuaged, or the loss 
of his legacy could not be forgotten ; but he 
was obliged to console himself with the hon- 
ors he had already received. 

The poet continued his labors in compo- 
sitions and sales for nearly twenty years af- 
ter the death of his patron, and by the most 
rigid economy accumulated a pretty little 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 91 

property, as was found at his death. He 
had written, published, and sold several 
wills of his own, before his death, but he 
left one altogether different as his last testa- 
ment. Some of the fair damsels mentioned 
in a will he published many years before, 
had grown old when he was about to give 
up the ghost, and their charms were no lon- 
ger the keys of his coffers. During a great 
part of his life no man was more self-com- 
placent than Jonathan Plummer; no poet 
ever more satisfied with his muse ; but his 
distracted brain at length was seized with 
the disease of self -abhorrence, and he acted 
on the maxim, ^' if thine eye offend thee, 
pluck it out," until it led to a mutilation 
of his person ; but he recovered from this, 
and died of self-starvation. So departed 
this poet of dreadful accidents^ of groans, 
and tears^ and vmrnings. who had been city 
and country ballad-monger for more than 
forty years. If his fame shall not be as ex- 
tensive as the laureates of other times, his 
life was more singular; no one of the whole 
list, from Dryden to Southey, was more in- 
dustrious; and in this he differed from them, 
he was more successful in selling than in 
composing; and perhaps in one more he sur- 
passed them, he was quite as grateful to his 
patron as they were to their kings. Dryden 
was removed from his office by a profligate 



.'92 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

monarch, or his subservient ministers, to 
make room for such a poetaster as Shad- 
well. The supremacy of Plummer was 
never questioned, nor was he ever supersed- 
ed; although at times it must be confessed 
that Dexter received praise from rival poets, 
and " rolled it as a sweet morsel under his 
"tongue." Plummer was moral, didactic and 
pathetic, but indifferently descriptive. I do 
not remember that he ever attempted a full 
picture of the palace and its appendages, 
notwithstanding it afforded a more ample 
field for poetical description than Windsor 
Forest^ or even Wapping^ themes on which 
Pope dwelt with so much delight, and in 
which he succeeded so admirably well. 
Sternhold and Hopkins were the models on 
which our bard fashioned his productions, 
and if he deviated from them it was to fol- 
low the early New England psalmist, whose 
works, shame on the taste of the times ! have 
gone down to oblivion. He satirized the fol- 
lies and vices of men without being particu- 
lar as to fools and culprits. 

Plummer boasted that he had been crown- 
ed with the poet's wreaths of flowers, by the 
hand of his patron, in open day, but never 
seemed satisfied that all had been done 
which the august ceremony required. Some 
years after the laurel crown had been placed 
on Plummer's brow, some one read to him 



LIFE OF DEXTER. ^3- 

the ceremony of crowning those poets who 
had won*the prizes in Italy. The crowning 
of Petrarch and Corrina attracted his atten- 
tion, and he sighed to think that he nor his 
patron was acquainted with these gorgeous 
ceremonies when he was honored with the 
laurel. Dexter had been told that the Dru- 
ids crowned their bards with misletoe, and 
as this did not grow in his garden he was 
directed to use parsley in its stead. This 
herb, or rather weed, is frangible, and easily 
wilts ; but in this case it did not perish by 
sun, wind or rain, for the mob of boys press- 
ed on so furiously that the ceremony was 
interrupted, the laurel scattered, and the 
poet and his patron fled. Some laughing 
damsel, hearing of the issue of the ceremony, 
bound some artificial flowers on the cocked 
hat, which looked as well as the wreath of 
Parnassus, drenched in the richest dews of 
Castalia. This was the only time an attempt 
was ever made to crown an American poet, 
Kterally, as it was done in former times. 
Still there are men now walking our streets 
who wear the bays by dint of puflers, who 
never deserved a single leaf of laurel ; who, 
for tinshy-washy^ silky-Tmlky rhymes, print- 
ed in either hemisphere, and trumpeted by 
those who expect a similar favor, are 
astonished that the world let them pass 
without pseans from every quarter. They 



M OFE OF DEXTEK. 

ft 

may reign for a while, as Shadwell took the 
laureate's leaf from Dry den, but they will in 
a few years pass away as the whole bevy 
of the Delia Cruscan school was swept into 
oblivion by the iron hand of GifFord. There 
was some hissing among the small snakes, 
and writhing and darting of stings of those 
who reared their heads as gorgons of a big- 
ger size, but the very '-^ reliictantes dracones'' 
died within the grasp of the modern Juvenal. 
Oh ! for some extermination of this noi- 
some race, for whether they belong to the 
tribe of creeping reptiles, or may be classi- 
fied with fawning puppies, they are equally 
offensive. 

The poet was in the full sale of his works 
in 1808, after the death of his patron, when 
a young lawyer came to Newburyport to 
practise in his profession. The honest own- 
er of the premises which he wished to hire 
told him candidly, that he would find one 
great nuisance about the premises, that no 
one but death could abate. He then stated 
that Plummer, the poet, was in the habit of 
fitting on the steps of the office several hours 
in the day, and that his temper was so vin- 
dictive that he, nor any other person, dared 
drive him away. "Never mind that," said 
the young man, " I will take that upon my- 
self" On taking possession of the premises he 
said not a word to Plummer for some weeks, 



LIFE OF DEXTER-. 95 

and he came with his basket as usual. The 
occupant in the mean time bought of all the 
Parnassian assortment of the poet, and put 
his name as a subscriber for whatever might 
come from his pen; the poet's confidence 
was entirely won, and they interchanged as 
friends the words of salutation every day. 
At length, one day the lawyer took Mr. 
Plummer aside, and observed, " I know you 
are my friend, and you will hear me patient- 
ly. You are aware that people who visit law- 
yers' offices are of all classes,— sometimes 
the rich, who wish to oppress, sometimes the 
poor, who want protection, and not unfre- 
quently the vicious : now none of these wish 
to be inspected by the pious clergyman who 
may point at them in his next discourse ; 
this drives a great many from my door to 
others; you certainly do not want to injure 
me." The poet seemed to awake from a 
dream. " I see it, I see it all," was his first 
remark, — " you shall find me there no more," 
and was as good as his word. The poet 
was now invited to come into the office, and 
examine the lawyer's library, which contain- 
ed the English classics, and select those he 
wished for his reading. The poet sparingly 
availed himself of the offer, but took several 
volumes of poetry, which he read with avid- 
ity, and conversed upon the merits of the 
authors, as he returned the books, if with 



S6 * LIFE OF DEXTEJR. 

some singularity, certainly with no small 
degree of acumen ; but after a few months 
he ceased to come altogether ; when the law- 
yer meeting him, said in a pleasant way, " I 
wish to know, friend Plummer, why you have 
discontinued reading my books ; " i hope you 
are not offended with me." " I will tell you 
honestly," said Plummer, " I dare not read 
any more books of poetry, for the more T 
read the less satisfied I am with my own 
composition. Once I thought I stood num- 
ber one as a poet, for God had inspired me, 
as he once did doctor Watts, but I can't 
make it go now, as I once did before I was 
seduced by the heathen gods and goddesses. 
I am punished for having gone astray after 
idols; but I can't help saying that they are 
sweet creatures ; but I must forget them, or 
I shall certainly be lost." It was in vain 
for the young gentleman to assert that in 
his opinion. Youngs Milton^ Cotoper^ and 
others were equally inspired with the good 
doctor Watts; it would not do. On a close ex- 
amination the inquirer found that " Quarles^ 
Emblems'^ was this poet's most admired 
volume, and this was presented to him. 
The subsequent writings of Plummer bore 
evidence of his having thoroughly read the 
work; no wonder that such a wild, pious, 
half crazy production of genius as that of 
Quarles' should attract such a poet as Plum- 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 97 

mer. Indeed, it is astonishing that the work 
js not held in higher estimation than it is, by 
those of purer taste, for some of his figures 
and ilhistrations border on the oriental beau- 
ties of the Apocalypse. 

The person of Plummer was not of most 
etherial make. His feet were long and 
clumsy ; his legs thick, his chest broad and 
strong ; his face was long, with a prominent 
nose, wide mouth and thick lips. He was 
irascible and vindictive, and it fared sadly 
with the boy he caught, who, to use his own 
peculiar phrase, attempted to make gamut 
of him. He had the vanity — and is there a 
poet without it? — to think that he was a 
handsome man, and that half of the female 
world was enamored with him ; but neither 
beauty, wealth or fame, kept the laureate 
from the destiny of falling by his own will. 

" Poets, alas ! must fall like those they sung, 
Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue." 

A humble stone marks the spot where the 
ashes of the laureate repose, but {q,w pil- 
grimages are made to it. Around him rest 
the early settlers who were men of renown. 
The Dummers, the Sewalls, <fec., are there, 
in their narrow beds. The requiem that 
sung them to repose had ceased ages before 
the laureate came to join the congregation of 
the dead. In the same grave-yard are buri- 
ed two poets of legitimate standing among 



98 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

the sons of song. William Boyd, who was 
the author of a poem on Woman, and other 
pieces of exquisite poetry, found a grave in 
this yard, among his ancestors. His monu- 
ment, unlike most poets', is conspicuous. His 
taste was refined, his muse as delicate as the 
Mimosa ; no easterly blast could make the 
sensitive plant recede, fall and faint, sooner 
than a coarse, critical remark would the 
spirits of Boyd. His was no age for the re- 
finements of the muse. Poetry, at the time 
he flourished, some forty years ago, was 
held in slight estimation, particularly if it 
was classical, as was every line from the 
pen of Boyd. Plummer- and Boyd were 
contemporaries : the latter was bred in the 
groves of learning, and drank freely from the 
pure fountains of inspiration ; the former 
grew up among fishermen, clam diggers, 
and lobster catchers, yet his works were read 
by thousands where Boyd's were by one. 
The ballad maker and death's head vender 
grew rich on the sale of his trash, when 
the sweet and delicate bard paid for the 
printing of his own poems, without thinking 
of sales or profits — so much depends on the 
spirit of the age in giving character to men. 
Robert Coffin, well known as the " Boston 
bard," was buried in this place also. Hfe 
wrote many things that bore the true stamp 
of genius, but his existence was short, fever- 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 99 

ish, and but of little value to society. He 
had none of the delicacy" of Boyd, or the 
perseverance of Plummer. As soon as he 
began to reason, and feel, he quarrelled with 
heaven, earth and himself, and continued 
the warfare until life was at an end. His 
works were collected and published by him- 
self a few years before his death. The 
fame of a writer of fugitive pieces is gener- 
ally lessened by a collection of them. Odes, 
hymns, &c. often receive a momentary 
brightness, and current reputation, from the 
occasion on which they were written, which 
is lost or greatly impaired when they are 
presented in a volume. Plummer was wise 
enough to give only that which the occasion 
called forth, and never stereotyped or seldom 
published a second edition. He knew the 
signs of the times, and the tastes and habits 
of the public. The poet laureate went to his 
grave thinking that " his eloquence was 
sweeter than his song." Villiers and Ber- 
nard, two excellent actors of the old Federal 
street theatre, were on a visit to Newbury- 
port, giving readings and recitations which 
were very well attended. At that time 
there were a goodly number in the city who 
were fond of elocution. By some address 
on the part of several gentleman of the place, 
the actors had an interview with Plummer 
and prevailed on him to read, recite and de- 



loo LIFE OF DEXTER. 

claim, some of his own compositions in prose 
and verse. After hearing him for a long 
time, they gave it as their opinion, that if 
he had received proper instruction he would 
have made one of the first pulpit orators of 
the age, — having a voice strong, flexible, 
and euphonious ; but which was spoiled by 
the affectation of being wonderfully pathetic. 
Plummer is not the only one made ridiculous 
by such affectation. The evil is a common 
one in our pulpits to this day, although 
there have been great improvements in pul- 
pit eloquence within a few years; there is 
more nature and less cant than formerly 
among ecclesiastic or other orators. 

The person who had the most influence 
over Dexter of all who were near him was a 
female African, whose name was Lucy Lan- 
caster. She was the daughter of an old Afri- 
can brought to this country when young. 
He always stated that he was the son of a 
prince, and had been taken in his first battle. 
He was always believed by his master in 
his assertions, and these were strengthened 
by the attentions paid him by those who 
came with him, young and old. On the 
day of negro election, as it was at that time 
called, in Massachusetts — meaning nothing 
more than this, that by long usage, the 
slaves, who were alv/ays treated well in that 
state, were permitted to have a parade and 



LIFE OP DEXTER. 101 

jollification on Boston common, on the day 
of the assembhng of the general court ; Cae- 
sar, Lucy's father, was generalissimo, and 
had from his rank twelve footmen to run by 
his side while he paraded on horseback. 
His horse was always one of great speed 
and elegance ; for he seemed to have a pre- 
sumptive right to borrow the best horse in 
the town. The daughter of the prince Cae- 
sar was Patagonian in size, and quite heroic 
in character. She was shrewd, well inform- 
ed, and brave as ever man or woman 
could be. She allowed no negro to enter 
her dwelling. Her acquaintances were of 
the first gentry. If a person was named 
for the most unhesitating confidence it was 
lawyer Parson, as she was called by the 
boys — a name they courteouly bestowed up- 
on her, because they thought her mind was 
of a kindred order to that of the " giant of 
the law." She endeared herself to many for 
great services during an alarming period of 
sickness, in 1796, when the yellow fever 
raged in the town. Night and day she spared 
no pains, but fearlessly, resolutely and skil- 
fully'- attended her sick friends. She had a 
constitution nothing, in that day, could break 
down, and her judgment was of a superior 
order ; as far above other common minds as 
her strength was above that of ordinary fe- 
males. Dexter, finding that she lived in the 
9# 



lO^ LIFE Of DEXTER. 

upper classes of society, sent for her in some 
case of sickness, and, much to his credit, she 
ever afterwards kept the hold she had at 
that time gained as Dexter's nurse. She 
was the confidant and confessor of the whole 
family, and, by her prudent management, 
often settled quarrels or prevented them. It 
was in vain for any member of the family to 
oppose corporeal or mental power against 
her, and after a while they made no resis- 
tance to her mandates. If Dexter loaded a 
gan to shoot some one, Luce was sent for ; 
if the son had a crazy lit, she must be 
there ; if the daughter made an escape, as 
she sometimes would do. Luce hxmted her 
up, and brought her back. She entered the 
house when she pleased, and staid as long 
as she pleased. The servants obeyed her as 
mistress of the whole household. This sa- 
gacious woman always gave Dexter more 
credit for mind than any one else ever did. 
She thought that he was a very honest man 
and would not take any advantage of his 
workmen, but would see them paid strictly 
according to contract. She thought that 
his eccentricities arose in a measure from 
the flow of his animal spirits. He could 
not be still, and having nothing of impor- 
tance to occupy his mind, he fluttered 
from folly to folly without thinking of what 
he was about. She understood his charac- 



Like of dexter. 103 

ter perfectly, and when he was in one of 
these restless fits, she would, if possible, 
keep him from liquor, and advise him to 
make an alteration in the garden, out houses 
or fences ; and as soon as his workmen were 
busy, he was happy until the matter was 
finished, and this cure often was effectual 
for some time. As Dexter became more 
weak and irascible, the more she was wanted, 
and the more good she did. There can be 
no doubt but that his freaks would have 
been oftener and more injurious if he had 
dispensed with her services. She often 
quenched the fire as it was kindling, and 
shot the folly ere it flew. Dexter never 
understood the sound maxim of prudence, 
*' When you do}iH know what to do, donHyou 
do you don't know whatr There is some 
excuse for the man; he had no taste for 
reading any thing, and probably did not pay 
much attention to any thing he might have 
attempted to read; he was excluded from 
all society ; the common walks were not 
paths for him, and in the higher circles he 
could not travel. The pride of walking in 
his garden, watching his flowers and trees, 
was something, and the contemplation of 
his images still more. He said of himself 
that he could no more be still than a devil's- 
needle, and sometimes used to say if there 
was a transmigration of souls he should next 



104 LIFE OF DEXTER. 

appear in one, and with this train of thought 
in his mind he would suffer no one to kill 
this insect. Thus his mind roved from whim 
to whim, which might'have been kept steady, 
as it was in early life, if he had not been 
free from all anxiety for a support. This 
solicitude to obtain a subsistence is the bal- 
ance-wheel in minds much stronger than 
that of our subject. 

Dexter continued his course of life, with- 
out any essential change of habits, until Oc- 
tober 26, 1806, when he quietly expired at 
his palace. 

" In Monday place, Sir Richard Monday died." 

His life was a much longer one than could 
have been reasonably expected of a man 
given to such indulgences. One thing seem- 
ed to protract his days ; he drank nothing 
but the purest and best of liquors. Most 
inebriates grow gross in their tastes, and at 
last prefer that liquor which comes the near- 
est to the highest proof alcohol to any other. 

In his last days, he was sensible of the 
follies of his life, and was desirous of aton- 
ing for his errors as far as he could, by mak- 
ing a just disposition of the property he was 
about to leave. He took the best of advice 
and followed it. It is a singular fact, that 
while most wise men's wills are injudicious 
in some features, no one ever found fault 
with Dexter's. Not only his offspring, but 



LIFE OF DEXTER. 105 

his collateral relations, were provided for in 
a proper distribution of his goods and estate. 
His remains were not allowed to repose in 
the tomb he made for himself; the Board 
of Health would not permit his wishes to be 
carried into eifect, and in this they were pru- 
dent. The grave of such a man, in such a 
public place, would have been a nuisance 
indeed. He sleeps quietly in the Hill ceme- 
tery, in Newburyport, the most numerous 
congregation of the dead within the precincts 
of the corporation. A simple stone marks 
the grave of the once ambitious fortunate^ 
whose living dreams were full of posthumous 
glories. The Dexter house has lately been 
repaired, but the garden is not kept in such 
order as it was in the days of the second oc- 
cupant after the decease of the owner. Mr. 
Caldwell had a taste for gardening, and did 
all he could to make the grounds look well. 
It will soon pass into hands desirous of re- 
storing its former beauty and splendor, with- 
out a particle of the frippery which once 
was seen there, to the amusement of the 
traveller, and to the annoyance and grief of 
the neighborhood. 



107 



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